<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>meriggiare by englishsummerrain</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27432724">meriggiare</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishsummerrain/pseuds/englishsummerrain'>englishsummerrain</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>NCT (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - 1990s, Artist Chenle, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, Light Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Seaside Villages, Set in the Italian Riviera, Summer Romance</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 01:06:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>50,051</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27432724</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishsummerrain/pseuds/englishsummerrain</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Behind him the entire coastline is alight. Lights of the village pressed against the cradle of the valley like fireflies, the streetlights on the road, the moon high above them, fat and waxy in the inky black sky. All the cosmos, all of heaven surrounding him, and Chenle looks so beautiful Jisung feels like he’s floating in nothingness — like he’s falling in love dizzyingly fast.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Park Jisung/Zhong Chen Le</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>129</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>NCT Bigbang Round 1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. homecoming</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><a href="https://twitter.com/MOZUSAGII/status/1336691445726527489">please take a look at the beautiful art/animation mozu did for this fic!!</a> </p><p>hello. welcome to another fic by me about summer. this has been a labour of love, beginning from me saying it won't be longer than 6k to becoming the monster you see now. i would have never thought i'd write 50k of chenji, but times change, i suppose. i hope you enjoy these boys as much as i enjoyed writing them. </p><p> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Rx75NelXH8yBGwWEZVui3?si=OcGvDrzTRuiAbPDBDkyKKw">playlist</a></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>To be known so well by someone is an unimaginable gift. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>But to be imagined so well by someone is even better. </em>
</p>
<p>Ali Smith</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The sunlight hits the sea so perfectly that if Jisung stares for too long it’s blinding. The waves lap at the rocks and the gulls whirl high above his head and out in the harbour all types of rich white Italians sit on their jetboats, churning up the sapphire water with cuts of white foam. It doesn’t quite reach to where Jisung is sitting — legs hanging off the pier, gelato dripping sticky across his fingers — and instead he’s left to watch peacefully, hat pulled low, eyes cast out to the horizon.</p>
<p>Being in London he'd almost forgotten how beautiful the Mediterranean could be — the sheer shade of brilliant blue, like someone had turned the saturation up on real life. It’s like if he dipped his hands in he’d come up with a fistful of diamonds — a treasure to carry back home. Something to start a new life with, glimmering eyes of those that lie beneath the waves.</p>
<p>Little Jisung might have believed it was possible, but he supposes he’s not little Jisung anymore. It’s been almost six years since he’s been back in Italy. He’d been eighteen when he’d said goodbye — eighteen with an awkward bowl cut and toothpick limbs. The only sure thing in his life had been his ability to ride his bike and the fact that he wanted to be a dancer, and he’d felt transient, like the hot winds dancing through the olive branches. Everything had seemed bright and full of possibilities, and he’d had no idea that it would all come crashing down on him.</p>
<p>He’d trade passion for practicality, a dream for stability, and he’d feel it slowly chip away, everything that had once brimmed with colour turned monochrome and locked into a box in the closet, only to be sifted through as a pastime — a reminder of better days.</p>
<p>He’s barely recognisable nowadays. He’d dyed his hair brown a year ago, and though his roots are showing through and he needs a touch up, it still lends a softness to his face he quite likes. A youthful shine that had some not been stamped out of him, and one that had had him getting carded at the liquor stores in London, shop owners squinting at his Italian drivers license like they thought it was fake.</p>
<p>‘<em>Speak Italian,</em>’ they’d say. ‘<em>Prove to me this is you.’ </em></p>
<p>Something thinly veiled that left a bitterness in his mouth. Everywhere he went — having to prove that he was born here, and that he was as Italian as anyone else. It was careless, and that meant it hurt in a different way to the deliberate — and it meant, too, that Jisung forgave them.</p>
<p>Heart too good, his eomma said. Heart too pure — always seeing the best in everyone.</p>
<p>Jisung wouldn’t say that. He’d just say that people were inherently good — and that it wasn’t their fault. Making excuses even as it stung at him.</p>
<p>Maybe it was just that he was tired.</p>
<p>Regardless. That was then. This is now. Now he’s a man — now he’s twenty four. He’s loved and he’s lost. Lived a small fraction of his life. Changed, in some way or another. He’s been seen, and seen others. Exposed his heart and had it shattered. Little parts of him have been broken off and left behind, and he’s been left spinning — a compass in a solar storm. He’d found there was nothing left for him in London, and maybe he’d never meant to be there, anyway. He’d lost his dreams there, part by part.</p>
<p>That life wasn’t for him, and what had once felt like the one path in life had soon been a cinderblock tied around his waist, like he was standing in the river mud and it was slowly rising. He’d gone to London to dance — to follow his one and only true dream — and had ended up in a cubicle, pushing papers, the future fading away to a tiny pinprick of light at the end of a very long tunnel.</p>
<p>There had been only one choice. The only way to go was back home.</p>
<p>And home he has come. Back to the country he'd spent his childhood in, back to Liguria with its white brick houses and stone facades, terracotta and pale ash, the mountains rising in the background, cities and villages stacked on top of each other. Of course, here isn’t <em>home</em> — he’s in Genoa right now, and it’s a two hour train ride to Manarola — but it’s nice to spend time in the city for a while.</p>
<p>He spends lunch on the pier, but the heat gets too much, and he moves back into the maze-like alleyways of the old town, away from the cool sea breeze, sweat still pouring down his forehead. Under his sandals the concrete is on fire, and above his head the sun burns brilliant, though it’s only the start of the Italian summer. It’ll get hotter still — turn scorching up in the countryside. Bake the earth, make the harvest rich.</p>
<p>Soon he’ll be spending his days in the water, and the summer will drift lazily on by, just like it did when he was a child. When he was a teenager, wandering around the town until sundown. Throwing fishing lines off the dock and drinking in the orchard, swimming naked in the pond that had pooled in the lowest part of the valley, reading his novels by the stream. Forging friendships that melted like sugar in a puddle, sweet on the tongue but ultimately not made to last.</p>
<p>Jisung didn’t mind. He often felt transient — slipping from one world to next, head in the clouds. It was all a part of life, each season a chapter, written down then slotted neatly into a novel. Waiting to be bound eventually when he got time — when he wasn’t flitting through his dreams, whirling in all the ideas that threatened to burst from his head like flowers in the spring. So much to think and not enough time to speak the words to make it so. He always cursed his tongue for being too slow to ever allow him to express all he wanted. Cursed his mind for dwelling for so long, turning thoughts over and over until they were polished and glittering, until he’d dissected them all he could by himself.</p>
<p>The church bells ring and he stops in the shadow of a caffe opposite, watching the tourists toddle in, cameras heavy around their necks.</p>
<p>Maybe now is the time to fit that novel together. Or start a new one.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Every Sunday they'd go to mass. It’s what you did when you were Italian — just as much of a part of life as learning <em>Divina Commedia</em> in primary school or having your morning espresso. Jisung was baptised in the Church and given a Christian name (Andrew — the apostle, the fisherman), and his father knew the local bishop. He’d kissed the preacher’s son when he was fourteen, and then the boy had moved away — moved away before Jisung had learned any more of him than what the shape of his neck felt like beneath his fingertips.</p>
<p>God was everywhere. God was watching, down from the crosses at the peak of the steeples, down from the canvases in all the old villas. The Virgin Mary sat in their kitchen, and every night before he slept he used to pray — hands clasped, head down.</p>
<p>He doesn’t remember what he used to pray for, and it probably doesn’t matter anymore. He hasn’t believed in God for years. He used to sit in the confessional and wish he did, because it would be nice to believe just once there was a higher power guiding him.</p>
<p>He stopped going to mass when he moved to London, though he lied to his eomma every time about it. She says she still prays for him — and so sometimes he’ll do the same for her.</p>
<p>Now he’s back in Italy and he follows the tourists through the open wooden doors. There’s just the two of them — it’s not a big church. Most visitors would flock to the grand cathedral near the square, impressed by the striped arches and grand frescoes, but Jisung has wound away from the crowd — following the steps up the slope to where it’s quieter.</p>
<p>He sits in the pews, stained glass saints staring down at him, and he doesn’t know what he should pray for anymore. Direction, maybe? A light to send him down the path he needs to travel.</p>
<p>He’d followed his dream. He’d made it into University. He’d <em>danced</em>, learned more than he could ever dreamt of. The theory was often lost on him, and he’d barely scraped by in those classes, but when it came to performance he’d <em>shone</em>. It was only in the years following that he felt everything begin to slip away. Three weeks before he was due to graduate he’d broke his leg — a freak accident falling down the steps in his flat. Walking across the stage to receive his diploma in a cast had been embarrassing, and he felt the pity radiating from everyone in the room. Look at that poor boy with the broken leg, a degree in dance and nothing to show for it. Was it career ending? He’d hoped it wasn’t.</p>
<p>He’d hoped, and he’d been wrong. There was nothing he could do — they’d said he’d never dance the same again, and now when it rained his leg ached. The only light had been his boyfriend — hell, the only fucking reason he’d <em>stayed</em> had been his boyfriend. Always by his side, always supporting him even when he sat on the edge of their bed and cried, the world fraying away its seams. Jisung had stayed in London, in their tiny little flat, got his job, and every morning had woken up to the shine coming off, and the glitz and glamour falling away to nothing.</p>
<p>There was no grand dream. There was no fairy tale ending. This was his life now — pushing papers in an office, feeling his soul squeezed into a tiny bottle. His boyfriend had broken up with him within the year, and what had once been a rainstorm had become a flood, Jisung realising far too late no-one had taught him how to swim.</p>
<p>Here in the pews, though — in the most holy of places — that flood is far away, only trickling in the backs of his mind, and here he seeks guidance. Seeks castles in the hot summer air. Someone to grab him and right him and show him the way.</p>
<p>Jisung presses his palms together and just for once he hopes — though when he opens his eyes there’s only the sun streaming through the glass and the lingering scent of incense, and no-one ever comes.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The house is somehow just as he remembered it. The train ride takes some time, and mentally he thanks himself for mailing his bags home instead of lugging them around, because the climb up the hillside is rough, winding back and forth up the path that leads through the terraced farmland and vineyards. Most of Italy is mountainous, and Liguria makes no exception — especially here, in Cinque Terre, where the hills seemed to be like snakes, coiling in on themselves, jutting out at impossible angles, the best method of travel either a boat or the train tunnels dug beneath the earth. Growing up he’d been in good shape from climbing up the hill every day after school, and luckily he’d maintained that fitness — though it’s still work to get up and around to where the villa sits hugging the side of the hill.</p>
<p>At his back the village unfolds and the sun beats down, relentless and brilliant, forcing him to shield his eyes as he turns around and looks back down towards the harbour. The waves crash and the gulls circle high above, and down on the docks the candy coloured dinghies are lined up head to toe, an artist’s palette of colours smeared against the concrete.</p>
<p>It's the late afternoon and the sun is lower in the sky — still bright and brilliant, birds still singing, but lending a kind of fairytale magic to the old house. The vines creep up the walls and all the shutters are shut and bolted, bay doors which had seemed perpetually open (save for the worst rainstorms) now closed tight. The grass in the orchards comes up to his knees and the trees are ripe with fruit — not nearing harvest season, but close enough that as Jisung unbolts the old gate and pushes it open he’s already eyeing their branches. He reaches up and plucks a bunch of cherries, popping one into his mouth and spitting the pit into the grass as he walks towards the front door.</p>
<p>It's still so beautiful. The walls are white, splattered with dust and dirty, in need of a good wash but undamaged. There's cobwebs under the awnings and the door creaks ominously when he unlocks it and pushes it, but when it swings open he's struck with an oddly familiar scent — something he hadn't even realised he was missing.</p>
<p>He almost calls out on instinct — as if he's about to greet his mother — before he remembers he's alone. This is his home now. His things from England will arrive in a week or two, so for now all he has is what he brought in his backpack and travel bag — a few essentials, a few changes of clothes, well aware of the fact he'll likely be spending the days in only his shorts. Only sun lotion and a big hat a necessity, everything else done for the sake of modesty. Like Adam in Eden, in the days before the original sin — before he knew what shame was.</p>
<p>It's so strange being in the house by himself. It's huge — grand piano dusty in the lounge, bookshelves stuffed full of novels in Korean and Italian, sheets coating the couches that he strips off and leaves bunched on the floor, bathing in the sunlight spilling through the doors. The fridge is unplugged and empty, and the benches are swept clean — no fruit in the bowl, no half empty dish of his eomma's cooking for him to grab a snack from. No crockpot full of jjigae, rice cooker in the draw, kimchi fridge empty save for a single crumpled plastic bag. Ghosts of days gone by — of all the summers growing up. All the pictures are off the walls and Jisung goes around the house to undo the shutters one by one, opening them up to let the air in, trying to cycle out the strangely stuffy smell that seems resultant only of somewhere that's been abandoned for years. He picks up the phone to dial home and remembers the line is disconnected — flips the light switch and lets out a sigh of relief.</p>
<p>At least he'd paid the power bill.</p>
<p>His childhood room is completely empty — no bed, no dresser, closet swept bare. He kicks a dust bunny lingering in the corner and undoes the balcony door, stepping out to rest his elbows on the parapet and looking out over the orchard. Golden light shines through the branches of the trees and the grass is still — thick, wild. A flock of birds perched in the crown of an oak sings a summer dirge, and Jisung takes a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the summer sea, letting the sunshine kiss his cheeks and the serenity of the countryside wash over him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He puts everything in order the next day — walks back down to the village and catches the train to Monterosso. He re-opens his bank account and gets the phone hooked up, buys enough groceries to last at least a week and carries them back up the hill in his backpack, straps straining against his shoulders, glass bottle of milk in hand.</p>
<p>He spends the afternoon elbow deep in the fridge, scrubbing it clean before he collapses on the cool tiles, sweat pouring down his forehead, swimming in the heat. He hoses down the glass table, sweeps the dry leaves from the patio and sits down in a rusted chair, white paint peeling from the arms. He pours a glass of apricot juice and watches the sun set, leafing through a dog eared novel with his feet kicked up on the wet glass. By the time the pitcher is empty the sky is streaked dull orange and the crickets are singing, the moon nearly full where it hangs over the treetops. Jisung feels a peacefulness settle over his bones, and as he wanders back inside — leaving the doors cracked — and sets the pitcher down on the bench he hums to himself, still so unsure where he’s going but happy to exist just for a while.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Cleaning up the house takes time. He supposes there’s no need for him to clean it from top to bottom, but there’s no reason for him not to. There’s nothing else to do, and while there’s no time limit on it he finds having a task to complete helps keep his mind ticking. Besides, there’s something therapeutic about it. Wiping away the dust and cleaning up the grime, finding the little nooks and crannies he used to play in as a child. Here was where his sister had hid his teddy, here was the reading room — where he used to sit in his eomma's lap and listen to her read stories. Here's his appa's work room — tiles cracked from where he'd dropped his tools, sawdust and steel shavings on the floor. His old workbench, coated in so many layers of paint that where they'd chipped off it looked like the inside of a gobstopper, rings like the trunk of a tree for every project that had passed through his hands.</p>
<p>It takes the entire morning to finish sweeping out the downstairs and pulling the sheets from most of the furniture (despite the emptiness of his bedroom it seemed most of the furniture was still present — in the study upstairs Jisung runs his fingers on the underside of the desk, finding where he and his sisters had carved their names with a pen knife). By the time he's done it's warm and balmy and the sun is high and he officially signs off his responsibilities, dropping the broom on the floor in the kitchen and tearing off a fistful of focaccia, picking up his novel from where he'd left it face down on the bench, grabbing his bike and walking it to the trail that leads down to the main road. Once he makes it to the smooth pebbles he mounts up, and from there it’s easy sailing downhill, wind in his hair, day hot and bright.</p>
<p>The road is smoother, and he follows it uphill, but it only goes so far — after that he hits the trail again, and after <em>that </em>it’s a tiny winding track down into a flat carved out in the basin of the valley, a relatively narrow area where the vineyards and groves of oranges rise around him, where the trees are thick and the path is littered with stones. The sky is cloudless and through the breaks in the canopy of oaks and pines he can see a terracotta coloured roofs and the telltale nets of the vineyards, though they fade as he moves deeper into the valley, blackbirds singing around him, brilliant green dancing in and out of his vision. The gurgle of the steam grows, and the cicadas drone on but there’s no other sound. No other living soul. It’s too early in the summer, really. Most of the tourists stay in the village, the drive through the rounds in the mountains is too narrow and dangerous, and it doesn’t really matter anyway, because no-one really knows about this spot except for the locals.</p>
<p>It’s empty. Runoff from the river formed into a pond. Someone built a dock god knows how long ago and there’s rushes and reeds gathering at the edges, plants floating on the surface, water murky green. A few waterfowl drift across the opposite bank and Jisung takes his things from the basket in the front of his bike before he drops it on the grass.</p>
<p>He’d wasted weeks away here when he was younger. Swimming in the water, paddling away. Cannonballing off the dock. When he was older still, taking boys here. Kissing them in the shade, kissing them under the trees, tasting the pond water on their lips. Bare skin, fingers that fit against ribcages just right. The whispering sigh of the willows and the hot sun glittering off the water.</p>
<p>No matter. Memories of the past. Jisung flips through his book until he finds the dog eared page that marked the last chapter he’d finished, and then he sits down in the shade of a great willow tree, legs stretched out on the emerald green grass, the whole world melting away like paint smeared on a palette.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>It takes him a heartbeat too long to register the other person when they arrive. A ‘<em>ciao!</em>’ that’s replied to automatically. A wave of the hand. His eyes are still on the page, creeping up on the next twist. Someone is falling in love, maybe. A great surge through the main character’s heart, and she feels like she’s floating. Floating in the river, in the midst of the Dead Sea. Blue waters and blue skies.</p>
<p>In this world someone jumps into the pond.</p>
<p>Jisung’s head whips up, the sound yanking him out of the story. There’s water churning at the end of the dock, and then a head pops up — black hair smoothed away from his face, droplets going everywhere. His back is to Jisung and he strikes out, doggy paddling for a little bit before turning around and going back to the dock. It’s about five meters from where Jisung’s sitting, and as the boy climbs out of the water he gets a good look at him. Hands on the railing of the metal ladder affixed to the side of the dock, biceps tanned and carved. Smears of colour flecked up his forearms, broad shoulders, dark hair. Water dripping down his bare chest, faded red shorts hugging his hips, slung low enough he can see the beginnings of a V shape that dips into his waistband. Jisung’s throat goes dry and he has to shake his head, sending his fringe cascading into his eyes again.</p>
<p>The boy turns to face him — finally — and they make eye contact. Sharp grin, sharper cheekbones. He doesn’t recognise him — at least not from when he used to live here. Of course there’s six years between then and now, but even so, Jisung wonders how he came about this spot. What he’s doing here. Who he is.</p>
<p>Water dripping from the edge of his shorts, cascading across the dock like it’s falling from the lip of a waterfall. He shouldn’t be staring, still, and yet he can’t help it. The questions brim up in his throat and he has to swallow around them before they all spill out. Why is he here? What is the magic that seems to brim in his gaze — bright and unbroken, like it contains the essence of the blades of the sun beating through the dry leaves.</p>
<p>“I’ve never seen anyone down here,” he says. “Though maybe we’ve missed each other?”</p>
<p>"I just moved back," Jisung says. The boy has a thick Roman accent — so far from home it shocks Jisung for a second.</p>
<p>"From?" He tilts his head to the side, pond water dripping off the tips of his hair.</p>
<p>"England."</p>
<p>“You moved to <em>England</em>?”</p>
<p>Jisung wrinkles his nose. The tone isn’t rude — but it’s still blunt. A little curious, free of judgement, but enough that Jisung thinks to bristle for a second. A cicada lands beside him, screeching, and he waves it away. “Well, yeah…” Jisung starts, and the boy laughs.</p>
<p>“Whatever suits you, man.” He rolls his shoulders back, pectorals flexing, and Jisung hastily looks away, up into the endless blue sky, searching desperately for a trace of a cloud he knows he’ll never find. Something to distract him from the dripping wet boy standing at the end of the dock, only a few meters from him. “I’m Chenle,” the boy offers, and Jisung looks back at him.</p>
<p>He’s smiling. He lifts a hand up to brush his hair away from his eyes, and Jisung realises the colour on his forearms is paint. Faded smears, like they had been rubbed at half heartedly — pomegranate crimson, deep sky blue, flecked dots of turquoise sea. Like he’d stepped off the canvas.</p>
<p>“Jisung,” Jisung says.</p>
<p>“Nice to meet you Jisung.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The pond weed is slick between his toes, slippery where he stands on his tippy toes on the edge of the pond, mud soft, sun warm on his damp hair. Out in the middle of the water Chenle is doing backstroke, and occasionally he’ll shout out a question for Jisung to answer — completely without reason, as if he’d pulled them from a hat.</p>
<p>“Have you ever been drunk on a boat?” He shouts, and it echoes across the surface, strange and wide, like the valley is scooping up the boom of his voice.</p>
<p>“All the time!” Jisung shouts back. “My father used to take us on fishing trips. We’d drink wine and come back with nothing in hand!”</p>
<p>Chenle laughs, diving under, disappearing always for a little too long, causing Jisung to let out a gasp as he mimics him and breathes when he surfaces again.</p>
<p>“I found a rock!” Chenle shouts. He holds it up, then — before Jisung can even see if he did indeed find a rock — he throws it back into the water with a laugh. Jisung stares in shock for a second, but Chenle isn’t even looking at him. He’s already paddling away, looking for the next adventure.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“How did you find this place?”</p>
<p>Jisung’s turn to ask questions. The sun dips low, and though it won’t set for hours it begins to kiss the tops of the trees, beams breaking into pieces and painting dappled gold against the pollen floating on the surface of the water. Chenle is paddling beside him and the tips of his fingers are beginning to turn to prunes, legs numb from how cold the water is.</p>
<p>“Hmm,” Chenle says, and he flips over onto his back, spreading his arms out, his hand floating so close to Jisung’s shoulder the slightest movement might cause his fingers to brush against his skin. “Let me think.”</p>
<p>“How long have you been here?”</p>
<p>“Slow down.” He laughs, exhaling, kicking slightly and splashing water into the air. “Let me think. I’ve been wandering around here ever since I got here. I think I found this after a few days? I was following the hiking trail down the river, and there were a bunch of ducks waddling off the stones, so I followed them and—” he makes a gesture “—there it was. I’ve never seen anyone else here. Thought you were a ghost at first.”</p>
<p>Chenle laughs, again. He laughs <em>a lot</em>. Always so bright and sunny, like the world is there to be celebrated. It’s infectious in a way, and Jisung can’t help but mimic his smile as Chenle turns to him, face full of sunlight.</p>
<p>“Not a ghost,” Jisung says.</p>
<p>“You look it! Have you seen sunlight in the past year? Suppose not in rainy England, right?”</p>
<p>Jisung looks down at his hands, raising them from the murky water to stare at his skin — pale indeed, like he’s only lived on moonlight. He jumps when Chenle’s fingers brush against his, looks up to find him staring at him, curious, before he looks down and he realises he’s comparing their skin tones.</p>
<p>“You’ve been here for a while?” Jisung asks. Chenle is tanned — days and days, weeks and weeks, probably, spent in the sunshine. He has a ring on his pinky, a single golden band, and this close up Jisung can see what he thought were freckles are more paint flecks — dark brown, black, a single splash of gold.</p>
<p>“I live in Rome,” Chenle says. “But here? In Cinque Terre? Only a week. Soaking up the sunshine.”</p>
<p>“I haven’t been back here for years.”</p>
<p>“You’ve spent a lot of time here?”</p>
<p>“This is where I grew up. I — I actually moved back into my childhood home. That’s mostly what I’ve been doing. Fixing it up.”</p>
<p>“It’s summer and you’re doing <em>renovations</em>?” Chenle laughs. “That’s a bit of a buzzkill, isn’t it?”</p>
<p>He starts to paddle away without explaining why, snatching his hand back and diving under the water for a second, surfacing then stroking out towards the dock.</p>
<p>“What?” Jisung says, taken aback. “Wait, what?”</p>
<p>“I said isn’t that a buzzkill? Shouldn’t you be having fun? You know, instead of doing work?”</p>
<p>“It’s not work!” Jisung shouts, hastily swimming after him. “It’s not work! It’s my home! I grew up there!”</p>
<p>“And that makes it not work?”</p>
<p>He’s climbing up on the dock again, water dripping everywhere, turning around and raising his eyebrows, like he just expects Jisung to follow.</p>
<p>“It’s…” Jisung starts, unsure how to finish. It’s work, in a way, but it’s also restoring memory. Rediscovering himself in some way or another. Re-editing those pages he scribbled down in a childish scrawl so long ago. “I don’t mind it.”</p>
<p>Chenle shrugs, shaking out his hair then slicking it back with his hands. “I mean, suit yourself.” He stands on the dock for a second longer, lifting his head to the sun like a cat, eyes shut, bobbing along to an invisible song.</p>
<p>It takes a second for Jisung to follow. It takes a second for the world to lurch into motion, like somehow he’s already been pulled into Chenle’s orbit. He doesn’t really even know who he is, still, and yet somehow he’s managed to catch his attention all the same.</p>
<p>“That’s not it,” Jisung says, hauling himself out of the water, hand over hand on the rungs. The water relinquishes its grip with a rush of droplets and he pulls himself up, rolling onto the boards, giving himself a breath before climbing to his feet.</p>
<p>He’s swum his whole life, from when he was a kid — paddling in the stone pool in the backyard — to his teenage years doing ocean races, to his adult years, in lap pools at the gym beside his apartment, every morning, trying to keep himself in shape despite his diet of fast food and cheap pasta.</p>
<p>“Then what?” Chenle asks. Head tilted to the side, water glimmering on his skin.</p>
<p>“It’s just home,” he finishes lamely. Chenle huffs, a sharp exhale, sun a halo around his head.</p>
<p>“That’s reason enough.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>They walk their bikes back up the hill, back around through the trail and the zig-zagging slope up the side of the valley. At the fork that splits between heading down towards the village and up to Jisung’s house, they pause, and Chenle looks up at him, an eyebrow raised.</p>
<p>“This your turn off?”</p>
<p>“Yeah.” Jisung looks towards where the trees thicken, bowing down to the earth, leaves scattered on the ground, grass lush and soft. The birdsong is loud here and the earth sings, like Ceres’ happiness itself thrums through the air. Gold and green and clear blue, warm light, like he could open his mouth and swallow it whole.</p>
<p>“Well,” Chenle says, and Jisung waits, knowing there’s something more. It’s the way Chenle speaks — like his brain hasn’t quite caught up with his words, like he opens his mouth and hopes the end of the sentence comes to him before he runs out of things to say.</p>
<p>“Well?”</p>
<p>“Well,” Chenle repeats. “Do you want to join me for dinner?”</p>
<p>Jisung sputters, but recovers quickly, only stuttering slightly before he realises it’s most certainly not a date. In England he’d amount it to Chenle basically asking him for a hookup, but here — it’s just friendly. An offer of companionship.</p>
<p>He takes a breath and looks back towards the road leading home, then back to Chenle. He supposes there’s no difference. A bit of company is always nice.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Jisung doesn’t have his wallet, but before he can even say he’s going home to grab it Chenle dismisses him, mounting up on his bike and pedaling down the slope in the opposite direction, forcing Jisung to follow as if he’d tied a rope around his wrist.</p>
<p>“Wait!” he shouts, even as his tyres are crunching on the pebbles, even as Chenle’s figure is disappearing, the bright red of his shorts like a flag to a bull. “Wait, are you kidding me?!”</p>
<p>Chenle lets out a cackle, slowing down as Jisung catches up to him, grinning at him in a way that highlights his cat-like canines. The wind cards through his damp hair and his eyes glitter and he looks back at the road, whistling as they reach the point where the gravel and dry dirt turns to tar seal.</p>
<p>“What? You had plans? C’mon, Jisung.”</p>
<p>He doesn’t know what it is about Chenle. His brashness — the fire on his tongue — Jisung feels like it should infuriate him but instead he finds he wants to chase it. Find out why he’s so wild and free, why he moves like the world follows in his orbit.</p>
<p>Maybe he’s another moon for Chenle. Another thing helplessly drawn into his magnetic field. He doesn’t know, he really doesn’t. He only knows his eomma had always told him he was a curious boy, and he knows by now that he’ll follow that curiosity to the end of the Earth.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>They sit inside the pizzeria together, beside a loud table of older men playing cards, shouting over each other and laughing with their bellies, hand gestures going wide with every decibel raised. The girl behind the bar recognises Jisung — she’d gone to school with him — and he gives her a small wave as her eyebrows raise at him.</p>
<p>“You guys friends?” Chenle asks, glancing between the two of them. Up close Jisung can see that he’s fairly handsome — every line of his face is sharp and chiseled, and Jisung can’t help but want to touch. Fit his chin in his palms, run his thumbs over his cheekbones. His lips are full and rosy and he keeps smiling at Jisung, like there’s an abject joy in merely existing.</p>
<p>“She was in the year above me at school,” Jisung says. “Her parents own this place. I’m sure her mama and papa are out back right now.”</p>
<p>“Hmmm,” Chenle says. He rests his chin on his hand. “You know her?”</p>
<p>“Not really,” Jisung says. “We weren’t close. But everyone knows everyone around here, more or less. We didn’t talk that much. I hung out with her a few times at the discothèque, but otherwise…”</p>
<p>“Boring,” Chenle says, and it’s so loud Jisung jumps, eliciting another laugh from Chenle.</p>
<p>“How is that boring?”</p>
<p>“Dunno,” Chenle says. “I figured you’d know some cool juicy stories if you grew up here, y’know. Who’s the mailman’s kid? Where did all the couples go to fuck? Who’s orchard did you steal from? Where did everyone hang out?”</p>
<p>“You’re crass,” Jisung says, though he’s laughing. He can’t help it. “You’re gonna ask where everyone went to hookup rather than ask what we do for fun around here?”</p>
<p>“Well, one’s more interesting than the other.”</p>
<p>The girl comes around with their drinks, hair tied up, wiping the condensation on her dress after she hands them a beer each with a smile.</p>
<p>“Thanks,” Jisung says, flashing her a grin back.</p>
<p>“Good to see you again, Jisung,” she says.</p>
<p>“You too,” he squeaks, waving weakly — though he’s saved from conversation by another diner calling her over, and he lets out a sigh as she turns away, brow furrowed, untucking the notepad from the back of her waistband.</p>
<p>“She knows you,” Chenle notes, then snorts. “You don’t remember her name do you?”</p>
<p>Jisung looks back at him and meets his eyes, and he’s barely holding back laughter, face twisted up, eyes sparkling. “Honestly?” Jisung says, a giggle bubbling up in his throat. “I don’t have a fucking clue.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The pizza is too hot and burns the roof of his mouth, but he’s forced to eat it anyway if he wants a chance at having more than one slice. Chenle seems to have a blatant disregard to the state of his tongue and shovels it into his mouth, letting out a soft moan at the first bite, before consuming it like a paper shredder might a document — chomp, chomp, chomp.</p>
<p>“Are you okay?” Jisung asks, hesitant, to which Chenle answers with a thumbs up.</p>
<p>Talking around a mouthful of food, he says: “This is fucking divine.”</p>
<p>Jisung reaches over and picks up another slice, trying not to laugh. Trying not to think about how Chenle looks cute even though his cheeks are stuffed like a hamster and his mother had most assuredly taught him not to talk with his mouth full.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The cicadas seem louder at night, as if the moonlight empowers them — a conductor to the orchestra. Chenle sits on the edge of the fountain with him, head thrown back, throat bared, a rabbit to the wolves.</p>
<p>Though Jisung wonders — who was the rabbit, and who was the wolf?</p>
<p>The water trickles down behind them, stone still warm even after the sun has long set, and across the steep, narrow cobblestones a couple stumbles, arms around waists, stopping outside a basket of violet flowers to push each other up against the wall, one of the girls’ hats falling off and hitting the path, hands in hair instead. Jisung watches for a second, glancing away as it starts to get heated, the girl against the wall cupping the other’s ass through her dress.</p>
<p>“Well,” Chenle says, clearing his throat and making eye contact with Jisung with a snort. “That’s something, isn’t it?”</p>
<p>“Not the worst I’ve seen,” Jisung says — which is very true. Hell, he’s been in worse situations himself. A little too much wine, a little too handsy. Frantic kisses and the warm sun on the bricks at his back, until the nonna who’d lived upstairs had appeared on the balcony and shouted them off, and he’d gone running into the shade, laughing, lips kiss bitten, the world a sparkle around him.</p>
<p>“The joys of being young and in love.”</p>
<p>“Don’t you wish you could be sixteen again? Not a care in the world, no worries about money, feeling like you had your whole life sorted out?”</p>
<p>Chenle shrugs. “Sometimes. But life gave me a pretty good lot. It used to bother me a few years ago, but not anymore.”</p>
<p>“Oh, what do you do?” Jisung asks. Chenle holds up his hands, palms outstretched, as if they hold the hold to answer to his question.</p>
<p>“I’m an artist.”</p>
<p>“That explains the paint.”</p>
<p>Chenle nods. “I figure it’ll fall off eventually. Scrubbing it is annoying. Makes my skin go raw. Plus isn’t it aesthetic? I look like I’m from one of those artsy French movies, y’know? The ones where the reclusive hermit girl falls in love with the artist upstairs and they fuck on a drop sheet.”</p>
<p>“You are so <em>crude</em>,” Jisung says.</p>
<p>“Am I wrong, though?”</p>
<p>“I don’t particularly keep up with French cinema.”</p>
<p>“Do you watch movies? C’mon. That’s a really awful joke to fall flat on, please give me something.”</p>
<p>“No, I know what you’re talking about,” Jisung says, finding amusement in Chenle’s desperation. “It was just a bit out there.”</p>
<p>Chenle waves his hand. “But you get it, don’t you? It was oddly specific, but you get it?”</p>
<p>“I get it,” Jisung repeats, distracted for a moment as someone stumbles out of the bar opposite, bracing their hand against the wall for a second before they glance left and right then start to walk up the steep hill opposite. Jisung realises, belatedly, he’s going to have to walk his bike the entire way home, all the way up the hill. The promise of free food had sounded good, but walking back now sounds like hell.</p>
<p>“Good. But yeah. I paint, mostly. Do portraits. I like drawing people — it’s like capturing an entire life in a single moment.” There’s a different energy when he talks now — something a little more reserved. That brightness still bursts at its seams within him, but it seems to come from somewhere deeper — black coals, molten core, hot glass and melting gold. Chenle is constantly moving, but he seems to slow here, just for a second. “It’s nice being here,” he continues, kicking his feet. Somewhere else in the village, someone laughs, a woman, shrill and high. A dog barks, and then another, and above them in the inky sky the stars are innumerable. The waves lap against the concrete docks and the gulls shriek, and music floats from nowhere in particular, a ghostly band playing their own tune. “There’s all kinds of people in Rome — I do photography sometimes, just to capture them — but it’s nice to be somewhere slower. I can sit around here and not feel like I need to go anywhere.”</p>
<p>“That’s the summer, isn’t it?”</p>
<p>“It’s better. Like a real vacation. I haven’t had a good rest in years — not since I was in high school. I used to get worried if I didn’t work enough I’d lose my apartment, or all my clients. But now it’s — it’s nice to just watch the world go by.”</p>
<p>“I know the feeling,” Jisung says. He’d lost sight of the future for a while there, just living for the next day — for his next vacation or the next Saturday, waiting to sit in Hyde Park and watch the ducks chase after bread thrown to them. Trudging through the day to day, not enough energy to even dream of a better life. “Is it hard, then?” he says, clearing his throat and glancing at Chenle. “Painting for a living?”</p>
<p>Their eyes meet and Chenle tilts his head to the side, as if he’s sifting through his thoughts, picking through each of them like fine sand falling through a sieve.</p>
<p>“It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do,” he says. He clears his throat, though he still holds Jisung’s gaze. “I guess it’s like. Yes, it’s hard. But I’d rather do this than anything else. I need to create. I think my head would explode otherwise.”</p>
<p>There’s a beat of silence, a moment where it feels like they stare through each other — like a child peeking through the keyhole to the garden hidden beyond. Jisung thinks he sees lilies — bright pink, the same shade of Chenle’s lips.</p>
<p>“My aunt let me have the sunroom in her house,” Chenle says. Jisung blinks, pulled back to reality.</p>
<p>“To keep?” he asks. Chenle snorts.</p>
<p>“Yeah, I’m taking it back to Rome with me. Figured we could throw it on the back of the train, what do you think? No, just for the time being. She’s letting me use it as a studio, which is nice. At my apartment I just kind of hope I don’t get acrylics on my bed sheets.”</p>
<p>Another heartbeat. The same dog barking. Music, somewhere up the hill, echoing off the walls of the valley. Jisung takes a deep breath and smells woodsmoke, though he can’t imagine why. It’s still so warm — they’re both still in shorts and their t-shirts, breeze curling gently around them.</p>
<p>“I should probably get home,” Jisung says, even though it’s the exact opposite of what he wants. What he wants is to spend the entire night with Chenle, until the sun rises again and bruises the sky deep purple. Watch the village sleep and wake, wander around its back alleys showing him all its secrets — as if he was tracing the lines on his palm.</p>
<p>Here is family. Here is memory. Here is where the sun hits first when it crests the hilltops. Here is the church, where God protects us all.</p>
<p>Chenle nods.</p>
<p>Here is love. Here is where I had my first kiss, in the high noon shade.</p>
<p>“Yeah, it’s a long walk, isn’t it? Are you gonna bike the hill?”</p>
<p>“Used to do it all the time as a kid. Probably, yeah.”</p>
<p>Neither of them make a move. Chenle kicks his feet again and Jisung drags his hand back over the stone, turning sideways to trail his fingers along the surface of the fountain water. In the bottom of the basin a fistful of coins glitters — a few euro scattered amongst many more lira. Old outnumbering the new.</p>
<p>“We should catch up again," Chenle says. Jisung glances up, expecting to find his gaze on him, but instead finding his face turned to the stars, staring up into the impossible darkness. "It's nice spending time with you." He sighs, then looks down, meeting Jisung's eyes, something terrifyingly open about him amplified by the waxy moonlight.</p>
<p>"Yeah?" Jisung says, and it sticks in his throat.</p>
<p>"I'm staying at the top of the hill. By the church, that building with all the flower baskets."</p>
<p>He knows it. A hundred meters up the cliff behind it and you can see the whole village laid out before you, thirty meters to the left and you'll arrive at the church. If you climbed onto the roof of the house opposite them he's sure he'd be able to see the tip of the mountain, maybe, the worn balustrade of the cliff tops, the lookout that put the world before you as if you were a crow soaring through the empty sky.</p>
<p>Jisung likes solitude. He likes the only accompaniment to his thoughts being the bugs and the birds, likes sitting in the sunshine alone, lying down in the dry grass to sleep under the peach trees. He likes the possibilities of the empty sky, all the opportunities laid out before him. Climbing down the cliffside outside the house, across the steps cut narrow into the rocks to the tiny beach below, rocks warm between his soles, the cliffs rising high around him like gods flanking their charge. There's no harm in lonesomeness, no harm in silence.</p>
<p>And yet...</p>
<p>"Okay," Jisung says. "I'll meet you around noon?"</p>
<p>Chenle's face lights up — more radiant than the full moon, more radiant than the streetlights spilling across the cobblestones. His own miniature star, and Jisung wishes so desperately to clasp his face in his palms — feel the heat that must float off his skin.</p>
<p>Who exactly is Chenle?</p>
<p>"Sure," he says. "I'll see you there."</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Jisung walks his bike home under the starlight. There's a weightless feeling in his heart and a sweetness in the heat in the air, and when the light in front of his front door flicks on he can see the moths swarming under it, bumping into the plastic shell with soft thuds. He wipes the sweat pouring off his brow with the back of his hand and goes to trudge upstairs before he remembers he doesn't have to use the ensuite in his old bedroom — he's the only one here now.</p>
<p>The ground floor bathroom backs out looking over a gap in the trees, staring out onto the blackness of the sea, obsidian waves cut in half by the blade of the hills. Jisung pushes open the shutters and leaves the lights off, praying it won't attract too many bugs as he turns the shower on. He drops his clothes on the floor and steps under the warm water, sighing as it washes over his skin, washing the day's sweat away.</p>
<p>His brain is still running at a million kilometers an hour and it takes a second for him to remember what he'd intended to do.</p>
<p>(Pick up the soap, work it into a lather, scrub his chest with his fingers, working at the flecks of dirt that had somehow gotten stuck in the grooves of his collarbones. A foil to Chenle’s paints — blood of the Earth, blood of the mind.)</p>
<p>An exhale. The day washing away from him. It’s past midnight and the crickets sing, a tiny orchestra, background music to his thoughts. To the infinite chorus that runs around his head — <em>Chenle, Chenle, Chenle.</em></p>
<p>Chenle. He felt impossible. He seemed impossible. His smile, his laugh. The way, for once, Jisung wanted to pursue him. He wanted to listen to him talk forever, chase the canyons his sentences jumped over, see the way he looked lit up in the sunset light. Learn the lay of the land with him. Show him everything Manarola has to offer — all the little nooks and crannies, the way the sunlight looks hitting the waves on the coast. The flower boxes and the baker's laugh, the way everyone knows his name.</p>
<p>
  <em>Hello Jisung, how are you?</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>It's been a while, hasn't it?</em>
</p>
<p>The soap trails down his chest, little bubbles he scoops up with the tips of his fingers and flicks across the room, splattering against the terracotta tiles painted monochrome in the dull light. There's something different about showering with only the moon to guide him. One foot in another world, like he might be wrapped up in the shroud of night at any moment. One foot in the grave, one foot in the clouds, stretched out like he might break. A deep breath, and he surfaces, water crashing around him like a rainstorm, capturing more bubbles and working them into his skin.</p>
<p><em>Chenle</em>. He says his name — sounds it out in his mouth. <em>Chenle, Chenle, Chenle</em>.</p>
<p>It sounds good. Tastes better. Warm, solid. Melting like butter.</p>
<p>Jisung turns off the water and steps out, groping blindly for his towel before he remembers he'd left it hanging by the sink. Drying himself off as he walks through the house, leaving wet footprints behind like a treasure map. He doesn’t dress — he just flops on top of the bed and stares at the ceiling — at the patterns cast by the shadows, the chandelier hanging perfectly still. His hair is still damp and when he rolls over on the pillow he can feel it under his cheek — not uncomfortable enough for him to move, but still notable.</p>
<p>He groans. Rolls over again, splayed out on his back. Pulls the sheets up to his chest, fisting them in his hands.</p>
<p><em>Chenle</em>.</p>
<p>He can't stop thinking about him. Normally his mind is like a calm sea, a million thoughts bobbing on it like boats with their anchors dropped. Scattered but orderly. But now there's a whirlpool — now it's just one thing.</p>
<p>Chenle in the water. Chenle sitting on the dock. The lines of his muscles, the way his shorts had clung to his thighs. His silhouette, brilliant in the relief of the sunlight. The faintest definition in his stomach. His freckles there — one, two, below his belly button. Jisung presses his fingers into the same spots on his own body and finds hard muscle below, tension, stress he didn't realise he was carrying.</p>
<p>He breathes out and splays his palm against his stomach.</p>
<p>He wishes the thought would go away. He wishes Chenle would leave just as he'd left him on the road at the top of the village, a promise under the streetlight, hanging above them like a halo. Like mistletoe on Christmas. <em>Kiss me</em>, he'd thought, like Chenle might be able to hear him. One hand on the staircase railing, the other at his side. <em>Kiss me, please</em>.</p>
<p>It feels like madness. Jisung isn't someone to want like this, not usually. He likes the slow slide of falling in love, the romanticism. Long days, long nights together. All the yearning that came with it, the making up little stories in his head. That anticipation that brims, thrumming in the air between them like lightning about to strike.</p>
<p>And yet the way Chenle makes him feel — it’s something else. The kind of feeling that sheds light on all the old poems they’d read, how one might want to tear the world in two for someone from the day they’d met them. He makes Jisung want to write stories. To sing songs, to tease the emotions from his brain that no word would ever suffice for. To illustrate in other ways what he’d seen today.</p>
<p>The sunshine beating down on Chenle’s bare back. The two of them cut into shadow and skin, Chenle with his eyes glittering, his lips full, a drop of water resting at the peak of his Cupid's bow. Jisung had wished so desperately to reach out and wipe it away with his thumb, but it had flown off as he'd thrown his head back to laugh, and he'd known, really, that he'd never had the confidence.</p>
<p>Still. It was good to imagine it. Pressing his fingers against Chenle's skin. The swell of his top lip. How his eyes would darken for a second. How he might say Jisung's name. Would it taste good in his mouth, too? Sweet, rich. So soft. Like he was meant to hold it there.</p>
<p>The sheets rustle and the cicadas drone. Jisung sighs, dragging his fingers across his skin, heat pooling in his stomach.</p>
<p>He wonders what it would be like to taste him in other ways. Sticky like pomegranate juice. Would he steal his own name from his mouth? A kiss, just one kiss.</p>
<p>His hand slips down his stomach, and an owl hoots. <em>Just one kiss</em>, he thinks. He thinks more, too, so delirious it almost seems like a dream. Chenle in the pond, glimmering. Swimming like a siren. The way the light refracted and made it appear as if he was a painting, striding through the water towards him.</p>
<p>He sighs, midnight air sticky and thick. The night plays on.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. a boy from rome</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Wow, you're eager!" Chenle says, shouting over the church bells ringing a block down. He's leaning off the balcony, hair messy, shirt billowing in the wind, and he’s waving at Jisung, a wide grin stretched across his face.</p><p>"It's noon!” Jisung says, shielding his eyes from the sun as he gazes up at him. “You said to turn up at noon!"</p><p>"Did the English mess you up? We’re in <em>Italy </em>my dear.” He laughs. “I thought I’d see you when the sun set at best!”</p><p>Jisung’s not about to admit he’d woken up at nine brimming with excitement, and he’d only turned up exactly at noon because any earlier and he’s sure Chenle would have labeled him a madman. "Maybe they did. But I’m here, anyway.” Jisung says. “So are you coming?”</p><p>“I haven’t even eaten. Hold up. Let me let you in.”</p><p>Before Jisung can protest Chenle runs back inside, leaving him standing on the front doorstep for an awkward half minute. Behind him a few people are milling around outside the baker’s, and across the road and down the narrow alley to the right there’s a group of nonnas already in their seats, smoking cigarettes and chattering loudly, their laughter almost as loud as the church bells chiming noon.</p><p>“Good morning,” Chenle says when he opens the door, greeting him with a wide grin. “What a sight for sore eyes. The only person in this country who’s ever on time.”</p><p>“What happened to the English messing me up?” Jisung says, allowing himself to be pulled through the threshold by Chenle’s grip around his wrist. His touch is warm, and even after he lets go — running in front of him and taking the stairs two at a time — it lingers like a tattoo.</p><p>“Changed my mind!” Chenle says, and he bounces on the balls of his feet like an impatient child. “It’s fine! Now I get to show you my home and make you breakfast and you can’t say no! Or you can, I suppose.”</p><p>“I’m not gonna say no,” Jisungs says, amused at the change of heart — amused at how Chenle seems to be brimming with energy all of a sudden. “I’ll take the offer of breakfast, though. What have you got?”</p><p>“I <em>was</em> going to cook,” Chenle says, and Jisung has to stop himself from scoffing as Chenle leads him through into a hallway lit by sunlight spilling through a great bay window at the end.</p><p>“What, toast?” Jisung asks.</p><p>“Frittata, thank you,” Chenle tuts. They walk down the hall, past the wide open doors — the first leading to a bedroom with the curtains drawn and bed messed up, the second a bathroom, blue tile walls and red tub — until they get to the end and Chenle leads him through. “Mama always used to say I was a disaster in the kitchen, but I’m much better now. I really did think you’d show at two, you know.”</p><p>“Sorry to ruin your schedule.”</p><p>“It’s fine. Means I don’t eat the whole thing at once.”</p><p>The light is bright, the room narrow. The floor is hardwood and covered in stacks of magazines, the couches covered in throws and multicoloured cushions. There’s a bookcase on the far end, overflowing and crammed, books stacked on top of others, bookmarks sticking out of them at odd angles, and beside it a large tape deck rests on a table. The house is taller than the building beside it, and through the windows he can see the rooftop garden of their neighbours — a middle aged man pouring wine into the glass of a beautiful woman in a floral dress. She laughs, throwing her head back, the sound audible through the open windows.</p><p>“Welcome to my temporary home,” Chenle says, and Jisung glances back at him.</p><p>“You look like you’ve lived here for years.”</p><p>“Wow, and you haven’t even seen where I’ve actually made my nest. No, this is all my aunt’s. She’s a bit of a literature enthusiast. It’s thanks to her my parents moved here in the first place, you know. God knows why she chose to settle down in a place that doesn’t even have roads, but I guess we all make mistakes.”</p><p>“Hey,” Jisung says, and Chenle laughs, making a mocking face at him. “Hey, hey. <em>I </em>live here!”</p><p>“Do you? I didn’t notice? Here,” he picks up a cushion and throws it to the end of the couch. “If you want, you can sit.”</p><p>“You’re not going to show me around?”</p><p>Chenle hesitates for once in his life, brows coming together. “My room is a mess,” he says, slow.</p><p>And that — well. That gets Jisung’s heart beating, if only for a second. Chenle’s room. His messy bed, where he sleeps. His clothes strewn all over the floor and his scent lingering on the sheets. He wonders if Chenle had thought of him last night — though it’s not an idea he entertains for too long. Too dangerous. Jisung feels like he’s crawling out of his skin — it’s not like him to want this much.</p><p>“I know,” Jisung says, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “You left your door open.”</p><p>“Oh yeah.” And then there’s the laughter, there’s the smile, there’s the carefree Chenle that seems to glow in the sunlight. “You want to see the sunroom?”</p><p>“Your art?”</p><p>“Yes!” Chenle holds up a finger. “Just give me a second.”</p><p>Again — before Jisung can ever answer — Chenle runs off, feet thudding on the hardwood, leaving him standing all alone in the middle of the longue with the music from the street filtering in through the open windows.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The sunroom is a <em>mess</em>. Jisung can’t even guess what Chenle had ran off to do, because cleaning up was clearly not high on his list. There are things <em>everywhere</em> — sheets draped over furniture and on the floor, tubes of paint lying on every surface. There’s a couple of canvases on the couch and another on the floor, amongst balled up newspaper, mugs with muddy water and brushes sticking out of them, an open case of pastels, and other things Jisung’s layman eyes can’t make sense of. The room is open and cozy, filled to the brim with sunlight, paintings hanging on the walls and side tables overloaded with papers, and as Jisung walks up to the desk to take a look at his sketchbook he feels Chenle’s eyes boring into his back — a skittish nervousness that seems so unbecoming of him.</p><p>His current drawing seems to be of the village — part of the skyline, the washing lines and terracotta walls, the cross of the church looming in the background. In the foreground a hanging flower spills over the edge of its bucket, crawling towards the ground, petals outlined carefully in pencil. He flips to the previous page: a drawing of the fountain they’d sat on last night. Flips again, feeling the texture of the paper between his fingers. A stack of books on a table, a half finished cappuccino. A crow, facing back over its shoulder. Some of the dinghies on the dock, stacked head over tail. The church doors, not connected to their walls, floating in the middle of the blank space like a path to the unknown. Flip, back another page. Leaves — he counts four, five, six, seven different kinds taking up the top of the page. Drawn in pencil, light. Feathered edges.</p><p>The rest of the page is taken up by all kinds of body parts. Fingers, some slender, some fat, some marked by liver spots and wrinkled, some smooth. All kinds of eyes and noses, and — most prominently — lips. The same pair of lips, over and over. Pursed into an ‘o’. Wide open. Grinning, almost heart shaped. Jisung tilts his head to the side and goes to turn the page and finds Chenle’s hands stop him — then he’s beside him, taking the sketchbook from him.</p><p>“Ah, you don’t want to keep looking through there,” he says, shutting the book and placing it on the desk again. “It’s mostly nonsense. You know, sitting in the square drawing. Or whatever.”</p><p>“I don’t think that’s nonsense,” Jisung says, a little perplexed. One of his friends at uni had been doing fine arts — he’d picked him up from the building on campus a few times, even helped him wheel his sculptures through the concrete floored halls on the trolley (and then been pushed on said trolley himself). He’d liked seeing his mockups — all the scraps of ideas pinned up beside each other beside his chicken scrawl of notes, the way they formed a whole. The way it was formed was almost as important as the end result. The coalescence of ideas. The genesis of it all.</p><p>How did Chenle think? What made up his mind? What was interesting enough to sketch — all these parts of people?</p><p>And who? There was a nagging feeling about them — like they were people he’d met before. He didn’t doubt that Chenle was telling the truth — that he’d sat in the plaza one or twice, maybe near the war memorial, or on the lip of the same fountain they’d sat together on, and drawn the people passing by. All the boys and girls, mothers and fathers, and so on and so forth — carrying their groceries, lit cigarettes in hand, talking about the gossip. Sunglasses, sun hats, dresses billowing in the wind. Sunday noon, when mass ended and the village lit up in a whirlwind of colour. Chenle amongst all of that, working away with his pencil and paper. Capturing it in one way or another.</p><p>The world flowing on around him, crowd parting like water around a rudder.</p><p>“It’s just. Practice.”</p><p>“Practice makes perfect,” Jisung says. “ I play the violin and I used to hate it so much. I used to think that all my little practice parts didn’t mean anything. That I could make notes and sounds but I wasn’t making music. Like I just wanted to jump into playing concertos. I started later than the rest of my family — all my brothers and sisters, they play instruments too. I started later than them, and I’m the youngest, so it’s like I felt like I was always far behind. I used to be so ashamed of practicing, like they’d hear me fucking up all these notes and think I sucked. It was a reminder of how much I sucked at playing it. I gave up at one point. It wasn’t until I came back to it when I was seventeen and I realised… practice is all a part of it right? Everyone sees the finished result. They don’t see the thousands of hours of bad notes or sketches.”</p><p>Chenle snorts. “Yeah, and they tell you they wish they were as talented as you. That you’re lucky God had blessed you. Like — I’m talented. I won’t lie. But it feels almost an insult to assume that I didn’t bust my ass drawing my entire teenage years to do—” he gestures at the room “—all of this.”</p><p>“Right,” Jisung says.</p><p>“I play the piano too,” Chenle says, and he’s so close to Jisung he can count the strands of his unruly fringe, glossy in the sunlight. His heartbeat picks up, and suddenly Jisung is aware. Aware of his existence — of just how good he looks. They’re almost eye to eye, Chenle only a little shorter, and it would be so easy to kiss him.</p><p>“I get it,” Chenle continues. “That whole thinking you’re shit thing. The music college was right beside my university and there were kids there who were a million times better at piano than I’d ever be. I almost felt ashamed to go practice. I mean, I was doing fine arts, so it was a double shame to be watched by these kids who were busting out concert pieces for their assessments while I was plunking away at a simple nocturne. But I like it. It’s not all about comparison, is it? Sometimes it's just about passion, or what you enjoy. We're not all training to be the best."</p><p>A pause. Chenle's eyes on his. His hand rests on the front of his sketchbook and his eyes trace Jisung's face, constantly moving. He's always moving in some way another — like it's impossible for him to stand still. Like he's powered by motion, and if he stops he'll start fading into nothingness.</p><p>"I’m glad you picked up the violin again, too," Chenle says, soft. "I'd like to hear you play sometime, if you'd want to."</p><p>"My parents have my violin.”</p><p>He'd left it with them when he'd moved out — not wanting to risk bringing it to England and breaking it. It wasn't particularly expensive, but it was definitely <em>nice</em>. It sung like a shade of gold, like it was made for his hands. Like the two of them knew each other in a way or another, and only Jisung could tease out the right song from its depths.</p><p>"Oh," Chenle says. He shrugs, glancing away. "That's okay. I just thought it'd be nice."</p><p>"No, it would be," Jisung says. He knows he should take a step back. It's the right thing to do — to place a nice little gap between them. To pretend like he hadn't thought of Chenle in the inky depths of the hot night. To pretend like his name hadn't slipped through his lips, soft as the spring winds over the bluffs. Like a wave crashing to the shore, all momentum lost as it kissed the sand. "Maybe I can get them to bring it down. They were talking about visiting. I said I'd get the house fixed up first, though."</p><p>"So we fix the house up, then you'll play for me?" Chenle says. He tilts his head, catlike, grinning, fangs showing, eyes flashing. Not dangerous, but mischievous, like he's preparing for a chase. Setting a trap, leading him somewhere. He can almost imagine the swish of his tail.</p><p>"We?" Jisung repeats. "I mean, if you want to help. Sure. I'd love the help."</p><p>"Woah, I'm not your houseworker," Chenle says. "Though, you've seen my home. I am curious about yours. Is it big? Nice? Near the sea?"</p><p>"It's a big house," Jisung says, and Chenle watches him, rapt, fingers twitching. "We all used to live there. I'm the youngest of five. I shared with my brother, but then my eldest sister moved out and he got her room and — oh, wait." He stops, brows furrowed. "Yeah. It's big. It's nice. It's on the cliffs and there's a staircase that comes down to the sea, to a tiny little beach. We all used to swim there as kids. I've spent days down there. There's a big orchard all full of fruit trees and they're always so ripe. We used to have helpers who'd pick them for us and cook but... well, eomma sold most of the farmland off, and it's just me now. So there's lots of fruit and no-one to eat it. If you ever want to be sick of cherries you could just come live with me."</p><p>He realises what he's said the second it leaves his lips, and as if by instinct he goes to cover his mouth, though he catches himself at the last second and waves his hand, stuttering over Chenle's laughter.</p><p>"You look so shocked!" Chenle says, and it's bright and brilliant. "Don't be scared."</p><p>"I didn't mean to invite you to live in my house. We've known each other for less than a day. Oh my god, no. I just mean there's a lot of cherries. And peaches, and apricots, and oranges too, though they're not in season yet. A big herb garden too — we grew a lot. What I'm saying is we ate fruit every day and sometimes by the end of the autumn I'd be sick of it and almost happy to change to the winter vegetables. But then I'd look out the window and see the trees all bare sometime in the winter and I'd miss it again. Umm, that's what I was saying."</p><p>"You don't need to justify yourself, Jisung," Chenle says. "I understand you, anyway. I get what you mean."</p><p>"Yeah," Jisung says. "Of course, yeah." And finally he takes a step back. Back into a pile of newspapers he almost trips on, and Chenle's hand shoots out to grab him by the wrist, yanking him back, his other arm hooked around his back, pulling him against him and bringing their faces uncomfortably close, eyes wide, lips slightly parted, a shout dying on his tongue.</p><p>It <em>sparks</em>. Like a match held dangerously close to gasoline, and Jisung wonders if he opens his mouth if it’ll drop — light them both on fire. Chenle’s eyes are dark and soft and the world seems to fade at the edges, like waves lapping at sandcastles on the shore.</p><p>"Watch it," Chenle murmurs. "I know you want to get away from me, but look where you're going. It's a bit messy in here."</p><p>He lets go of Jisung, and again Jisung is struck with the urge to stare at where he'd touched him — like his fingerprints might glow. Like they might linger forever.</p><p>"Yeah," Jisung says. He takes a step to the side, heart racing. "Sorry. Eomma always said I was clumsy."</p><p>"Mine too," Chenle says. He laughs. "Trust me, mine too."</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They cook. Well, Chenle cooks. Jisung sits on the couch with another book pilfered from the bookcase and leaves through it, thinking about what he might tell his eomma when he rings her that night. Ask her for recommendations, maybe. Tell her about this crazy boy with his paints and his art, with his wicked laugh, with his smile that looked like trouble.</p><p>
  <em>You always know how to find trouble, Jisungie</em>
</p><p>The frittata is delicious and Jisung knows before he's finished the first forkfull he's probably gonna remember it for the rest of his life. Chenle can cook, but more than anything it's that it was made by his hand — that Jisung watched as he mixed it all together and fiddled with the oven, as he pulled it out with hands wrapped in brightly coloured cooking gloves. He watched while Chenle explained the plants sitting on the windowsill — how they liked certain types of soil. How this flower was from China, how they had grown the same type in the garden his mother and aunt had known as young girls. She'd searched for them far and wide when they'd moved here, and now it was something that connected them when they were apart.</p><p>"There's a big bush in the flowerbox at my mama's," Chenle explains, as they're walking down the road, air still and dry, hot buzz of the cicadas droning around them like TV static. "I used to pick them as a kid and throw them onto the street. I was a little shit of a kid."</p><p>"Has much changed?" Jisung asks.</p><p>"I suppose not.”</p><p>They move slow. It's how summer always is, like someone changes the timescale, like they're swimming through thick honey. All of Italy comes to a crawl, and if you were to speed everyone would look at you like you were mad.</p><p>Slow down, life is meant to be savoured.</p><p>Every day with Chenle is meant to be savoured.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In the crook of the valley, where the stream trickles and the birds sing, where their laughter is muted by the trees and Chenle splashes through the water — spinning and twirling, wielding a stick like he's eleven again and playing knights — the two of them walk downstream. It's cool and gentle and helps keep the heat at bay, the water frigid, trickling through the crooks in the green grass towards the river, headed out to the sea.</p><p>"We used to make little paper boats," Jisung says. "We'd paint them up with my father's paints and race them. See who reached the river first. Picking the blackberries as we followed the river's run, filling up our shirts with them and bringing them home."</p><p>"Oh my god," Chenle says, and he stops, glancing at the riverbanks.</p><p>"What?"</p><p>"I used to pick blackberries all the time. We went to Tuscany a few times for summer holidays — for English camp, and stuff. We used to spend hours in the fields, messing around and eating the berries until our fingers were all stained and gross."</p><p>Jisung breaks into a grin, because he knows the feeling. His mother 'tsk'ing him as he came home with sticky hands stained dark red, being forced to scrub them so he didn't pick up all the dirt. The sweet taste of the sun ripened berries. Carefully avoiding getting pricked, until his sister picked up a branch and wielded it like a weapon, chasing him and causing him to squeal, running into the river and shouting at her.</p><p>"Yeah, that sounds about right."</p><p>"Did you ever cook them?"</p><p>"Eomma made cakes," Jisung says. "And tarts, and muffins. I used to help her all the time, even when I was too short to reach the counter. Appa built me a little stool that I’d drag along with me so I could see what everyone was doing. And if we all managed to get enough berries we'd make jam — that was my favourite, because it was so messy and sweet. But mostly it was just the lady who lived down in the village who'd make it for us. Sometimes we'd run into her in the valley with her big basket, picking all the berries, and we'd help her. She had a soft spot for us, I think — she'd even let me take some of her berries."</p><p>"Fresh jam..." Chenle says, and he gazes off, out at the pristine blue sky, eyes glazing over before his head snaps back, madcap grin stretched across his features. "We should go pick some berries!" he shouts, and he's off, before Jisung can even yell at him and tell him he's going the wrong way.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The bushes are everywhere. Nestled in the shade, in great clumps in the flat part of the valley, hugging the trunks of the trees, before the slope turns into vineyards and narrow terraces.</p><p>"Here," Jisung says, pointing one out to Chenle, who'd suddenly become afraid when reminded of the fact blackberries had thorns. He pulls the leaves back carefully to pick the berries from the branch. "Like this."</p><p>He holds his palm to show his skin, unscatched, and the berry held in his hand — and before he can react Chenle snatches them.</p><p>"Like this?" Chenle asks, popping it in his mouth, grinning. "Mmmm. The fruits of someone else's labour do always taste better."</p><p>Jisung is frozen for a second, before he slaps him — not hard, just a smack on the arm, roughhousing, shoving at him. "Hey, that was mine!"</p><p>"You offered! I was just making sure a crow didn't swoop down and steal them. You should thank me. What if they were poisoned, anyway? I'm your cupbearer now. I try all your food before you, my prince. We can't let them poison you."</p><p>He doesn't know how Chenle does it — how the world seems to always be lagging behind him. He jumps from conversation to conversation so fast, and Jisung can't help but marvel at it. Adapt, start running after him, hoping he’ll get the first strike sooner or later.</p><p>"Fine!" Jisung says. "Pick me some berries, cupbearer."</p><p>"Nuh-uh," Chenle retorts, and he pokes his tongue out. "I'm unruly. Pick your own berries!"</p><p>"That's not how you treat your prince."</p><p>"You don't know that. We might live in a reverse society. You have to do all your own things. It builds character. Pick the berries, then I taste them."</p><p>"And what about the berries <em>you</em> pick?" Jisung asks. Chenle shrugs, gesturing as if it's Jisung's own problem to find the answer to that.</p><p>"Guess I eat them too."</p><p>"Fuck you."</p><p>Chenle's laughter is bright — brilliant, sunshine, birds singing along with him. The drone of summer, the absence of humans in the valley.</p><p>"Tell you what," Chenle says, and he pulls his shirt over his head, flipping it upside down and tying the arms together, tucking the neck into them and holding it up. Jisung tries very hard not to look at his chest and ultimately fails, though it's only for a moment — only a flickering glimpse. Picking out another mole, tiny smudges of paint. How warm his skin must be.</p><p>"Ah, is that a good idea?" Jisung asks, looking up at his face before he's caught, still entirely unsure what Chenle is doing.</p><p>"Of course it's a good idea. Every idea I have is a good one. Look." He holds up his shirt. "We can fill it up with berries. Easy."</p><p>Jisung scrunches his nose, peering at it. "If you say so. Are you gonna make me pick them all?"</p><p>Chenle drops his shirt on the ground and huffs. "Of course not. Just — show me that again. I wasn't actually paying attention."</p><p>"Could you at least lie and pretend?" Jisung says, though he's laughing — Chenle's naked honesty is refreshing.</p><p>"What, and fuck it up? C'mon. It's fine."</p><p>And so Jisung repeats it again. Chenle leans in, the heat of his body radiant, the spirit of Sol bottled into his bones. Peering over Jisung's shoulder, and he wants to fall into him so easily.</p><p>Fingers wrapped around the berry, pulling it. Chenle's fingers brush his skin and he jumps, letting out a small yelp, goosebumps breaking out across the planes of his back, hairs standing on end, thorns pricking at him.</p><p>"Shit,” Chenle says. He takes the berry from Jisung and pops it into his mouth, and Jisung doesn’t even protest, because Chenle’s hands are on him. “Sorry,” he murmurs. Thumb swiping against his, pressing at the pinhead of blood on the pad of his finger. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”</p><p>He lifts Jisung’s hand to his mouth, and his eyes are on his. Burning. Lips soft. Tongue wet as he sucks the blood from the wound, pressing gently at his finger.</p><p>“Sorry,” Chenle murmurs again, and this time he doesn’t let go. This time he presses a kiss to his finger, and for one whirlwind moment — for one moment where it feels like his heart might beat out of his chest, where it feels like his veins might explode or the world might end or steam might come out of his ears from the strength of the desire that surges up inside him like a volcanic eruption, like Etna blowing her top. God, for one moment and for all of this foolishness, Jisung thinks Chenle might kiss him.</p><p>But he doesn’t. He drops his hand and he smiles, and the moment shatters like a harpoon through a glass lantern, all the pieces glittering as they fly through the air.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Oh, prince,” Chenle coos, spinning in the sunlight. He’s barefoot on the kitchen tiles, arms outstretched, laughter on his lips. “I’ve never been in a castle like this.”</p><p>“Shut up,” Jisung says, though he’s glowing. The blackberries are in a tub on the counter and Chenle’s shirt is stained with their juice, spots like watercolour paints, blooming as they soak into the white thread. He’d kept up the prince roleplay the whole way up the hill, right as Jisung had let him in to the front door of his home, as they’d walked through to the kitchen and beyond.</p><p>“I’ve never been in a castle with such disrepair,” Chenle amends. “Who is taking care of this place? He’s absolutely awful.”</p><p>“Shut <em>up</em>,” Jisung says, and he finds it so maddening that every word that comes out of Chenle’s mouth makes him want to kiss him more and more.</p><p>“Why should I?” Chenle asks, giggling. “Are you silencing me? I will not be silenced. Why, I ought to—” he walks out the backdoor, forcing Jisung to chase after him, spinning around, sinking into the grass with his hands raised to the peach coloured skies “—I ought to tell the whole world what’s happening here!”</p><p>“And what’s happening here?” Jisung calls, even as Chenle is stumbling through the orchard, looking for all the world like he’d stepped out of a painting. Skin gold, hair dark, laughter ringing.</p><p>“A tale they’ll tell for ages to come!”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The stars burst. The night falls. Moonlight silvery, starlight brilliant. The wind in the orchard, sticky peach juice on Chenle’s fingers. They spend the night together — Chenle too lazy to ride back home, Jisung reticent when it came to his turn to beg his leaving.</p><p>He knows he should. At least act like he wants him to leave — at least act like he wasn’t desperate for his company, or his touch, or to feel his eyes on him and hear the lilt of his voice.</p><p>“That’s my favourite thing about here,” Chenle says, arms pillowed on the parapet, gazing out towards the sea. “It’s all the stars. You’d never see any of this in Rome. I still can’t quite believe it’s real.”</p><p>“Didn’t you see it in Tuscany?”</p><p>“Sure,” Chenle says. “But that was a good eight years ago. You tell me you remember anything from when you were a teenager.” He glances back at Jisung, looking him up and down. “How old are you, by the way?”</p><p>“Twenty four,” Jisung says. Chenle snorts, going back to gazing out into the garden.</p><p>“Well isn’t that fate? Me too. It’s a strange age, isn’t it? Childhood has left you behind, and yet you still feel like a kid. Left alone drifting in a sea of stars.”</p><p>“That’s one way to put it,” Jisung says. Chenle purses his lips, though he doesn’t look back this time.</p><p>“Then how would you put it?”</p><p>“I’d put it like—” Jisung hesitates, trying to formulate his response, giving time for the words to catch up to him. “Like… like when you’re a kid. Everyone does everything for you. And then you grow up and it’s like the world just. Dumps a bucket of responsibilities on your head and you’re supposed to work out how to sort through them. I don’t feel like I’m drifting.” He closes his hand into a fist and takes a breath. “I feel like I’m drowning. Or I did when I was in London, anyway. I lost my dream and it was like. Everyone just told me to suck it up and keep going.”</p><p>Chenle’s fingers brush against his arm. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Yeah, it can get like that sometimes, can’t it?”</p><p>“It was suffocating. My entire life was work. I looked at the future and it was like — this is it. This is what everything comes down to. Sitting in an office slaving away at a bunch of spreadsheets so someone else can make money. It felt pointless. I felt pointless. What was life for?”</p><p>His words are watery, and it feels ridiculous to say it out loud. Why should he be any different? Everyone else at his work seemed to be coping — they’d complain, but it wasn’t the soul crushing despair Jisung felt. The sense of being squeezed dry and ground to a fucking pulp, like he wasn’t already a husk.</p><p>“I felt so selfish,” Jisung continues. “Like everyone else seemed to have it figured out and I was the only person who struggled. I was underwater for so long the only way to escape was to go back to shore. To come back here.”</p><p>Chenle doesn’t speak. He just throws his arms around Jisung and presses his face into his shoulder, and it’s such a shock of warmth Jisung almost bursts into tears then and there. He’s not as liable to cry as he was when he was a teenager, but even then the surge of emotion that bursts up through his lungs like springtime flowers is such a <em>relief</em> that he can’t help it. The flowers bring tears, wet spring dew drops, and he returns the hug in turn, clutching Chenle against him and burying his nose in his hair, inhaling even as he fights his tears.</p><p>Chenle doesn’t smell like anything much. Just boy, slightly perfumed, no doubt from whatever conditioner he must use. It’s more the effect of it, like being this close to him breaks something in him. Like it’s something he’s missed for so long, and he clings to Chenle like he’s the last liferaft in a storm, like the world is spinning away from them despite the fact that even the trees in the orchard are still.</p><p>“I’m so sorry,” Chenle murmurs. “So, so sorry, Jisung. It’s okay.”</p><p>“I know it’s okay,” Jisung sniffs. “It just feels like… I’m worried I’m going to have to go back. I’ve only been here a week and it already feels like everything is sinking. Like the sea will swallow me up.”</p><p>“It won’t,” Chenle says. “You don’t have to go back, do you?”</p><p>“No,” Jisung says. “But I can’t stay here. There’s nowhere for me to work. What am I supposed to do?”</p><p>“We’ll work that out when it comes to it,” Chenle says. “Just enjoy yourself for now, alright?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Jisung says. The waves crash in the distance and he takes a deep breath, grasping at Chenle’s shirt, trying to melt into him. “Okay.”</p><p>“Good. Are you tired? It’s been a long day, I think. Maybe we should sleep.”</p><p>He hadn’t even noticed it until Chenle had said it — but now the words are out there it’s like it weighs on his bones.</p><p>“Yeah,” he says, though he doesn’t let go. “I can sleep on the couch. There’s no sheets on any of the other beds. They’re all dusty. I only washed the ones for my bed. You can sleep there.”</p><p>“You take your bed,” Chenle says, digging a finger into his back until he squeals, “and <em>I’ll </em>sleep on the couch.”</p><p>“You’re the guest. Let me be a good host.”</p><p>“Don’t sacrifice yourself,” Chenle says with a huff. The night breeze is pleasant and the heat has all but perished, cool air curling around their bare limbs. “How big is the bed?”</p><p>“Huge,” Jisung says. Voice muffled. “I can roll over and over and never reach the edge. Feels like I’m swimming in the Medditeranean.”</p><p>There’s a heartbeat of silence. More, thud, thud, like train wheels on the tracks. Driving them forward, driving them towards when the sun will kiss their skin again. Chenle speaking into his shoulder: “Then share with me?”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Jisung refuses to let him sleep in the bed until he showers, and Chenle relents, taking a towel from him and smirking as he turns around to take his shorts off, forcing Jisung to close the bathroom door for him, his entire body flushing with embarrassment.</p><p>He wants to curse, because it feels supremely unfair that Chenle is allowed to be like<em> that</em> with such ease, but on the other hand he’d never give it up. He’s infuriating but incredible — an impossible puzzle that with every piece he discovers becomes more and more complex, always slightly out of his reach.</p><p>Jisung — having already showered when they’d come back home — crawls into bed, pulling his novel from the bedside table and flicking on the light above his side of the bed. It’s there that Chenle finds him — wearing only his underwear, the tan lines left by his shorts like taped off strips on a wall, straight lines across his thighs, his skin milky where it disappears into his briefs.</p><p>Jisung swears he doesn’t stare — not that much anyway. He doesn’t think about running his hands up Chenle’s thighs, either, and he certainly doesn’t lose all sense of thoughts as Chenle lays his head on the pillow and turns to Jisung with a smile on his face.</p><p>“Better?” Chenle asks. Jisung closes his book and swallows.</p><p>“Better how?”</p><p>“I showered. I’m clean. No stinking up your bed with my sweat.”</p><p>“Oh, yeah,” Jisung says, and he places his book down on the bedside table, heart beating like a rabbit trapped in a box. The door to the balcony is open, and as he turns off the light a gust of wind comes through — like the heavens blowing out a candle, plunging them both into darkness. “Thank you.”</p><p>“It’s your house. If you want me to, I’ll do it.”</p><p>“I take it your bed smells like sweat?”</p><p>“No,” Chenle says, though he doesn’t offer more. The distance between them isn’t far — Jisung could reach out and fit his palm against Chenle’s jaw if he wanted to — and there’s something maddening in that. It’s dark and he can’t see Chenle’s face — only the murky shapes of him, the ridge of his cheek cast silver in the moonlight. The line of his body under the sheets. He wonders what it would feel like to wrap his arms around him — to feel him chest to chest.</p><p>It’s an easy dream to fall into. A dangerous one. Something that was safe when Jisung was alone, but that he can’t afford with Chenle so close. He worries he’ll hear his thoughts, or that somehow he’ll know just how much Jisung wants him, and it will all come crashing down.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. paradise</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jisung wakes before Chenle, the light in the room dull and golden, curtains limp, no movement in their own perfect world. Chenle is on his side, still, lips slightly parted, serenity gracing his features — and for a while Jisung watches him. The web of his eyelashes, the dusty pink of his mouth. All the tiny freckles on his cheeks. The sheet has slipped down and his chest is half bared, one arm tucked against it, a cluster of moles on the side of his neck.</p><p>He wonders if Chenle has ever painted himself.</p><p>He leaves before he wakes up, not wanting to be caught gazing so openly, and starts to make breakfast. By the time Chenle has come downstairs (wearing one of Jisung’s shirts) Jisung has already made them both coffee and is buttering up two slices of toast, the blackberry jam they’d made last afternoon sitting next to him.</p><p>“Morning,” Chenle says, yawning afterwards, not even bothering to cover his mouth. “Sleep well?”</p><p>“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”</p><p>“Mmmm,” Chenle says, and he stretches, arms above his head, rolling his shoulders, shirt riding up for a second. “Maybe. Did you sleep well, though? It’s your bed. I hope I didn’t ruin your mojo.”</p><p>“You did not ruin my mojo,” Jisung says. “Not at all.” He pauses, frowning slightly at the toast before remembering he’s supposed to add jam. “I made coffee for you.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Chenle says, and as he passes Jisung he puts a hand on his shoulder and kisses the air beside his cheek, humming under his breath as he picks up his mug. “I could wake up to this every morning.”</p><p>He expects Chenle to be looking out over the orchard — out to where the trees are painted in gold and the grass hangs still — but instead he finds he’s looking at Jisung. Smile small, eyes dark and soft.</p><p>Jisung thinks to deflect, just for the briefest of seconds, the thought crossing his mind even as he opens his mouth to blow it all away.</p><p>“Yeah,” he says, and the birds are singing. “Me too.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They eat breakfast on the patio, on the same table Jisung had sat at on the first day he’d arrived. Jisung pours them both the last of the apricot juice and vows to bring a basketful of peaches to someone in the village — maybe Eleanora, who used to come around to their house in the late summer and spend her days picking fruits and chatting with his eomma, asking about how his sister was doing in Milan.</p><p>“You can come down and stay with me,” Chenle says, and it’s so open Jisung doesn’t know what to do. It’s like a barrier has been shattered between them, like they’ve both become so content to be this close to each other all of a sudden. Sometimes unspoken but shimmering all the same — hearts laid bare and open. “If I was that annoying last night there’s even a spare bed.”</p><p>“I liked sharing,” Jisung says. Chenle nods. That’s it.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>While Jisung is washing up their dishes, Chenle starts to play the old grand piano. It’s strange and haunting, like the opening shot for a horror film, and after about thirty seconds of him plunking away at the keys, he starts to laugh.</p><p>“This is <em>so</em> out of tune,” Chenle says. Jisung walks back through to the longue to see him sitting on the old stool, the piano open in front of him, hands poised out of the keys. He glances up at Jisung and raises his eyebrows and repeats himself. “<em>Really</em> out of tune.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t know,” Jisung says. “That used to be my eomma’s. They couldn’t fit it in their new place so they left it here. You’re probably the first person to touch it in years.”</p><p>“Oh my god,” Chenle says, and he seems a little horrified. “It’s a beautiful piano. I can’t believe they just left it here.” He smooths one hand over the fallboard and the other over the keys. “I bet it sounds lovely.”</p><p>“I can get it tuned,” Jisung says. “It shouldn’t be hard, right?”</p><p>“Did your mother have someone who used to tune it?” Chenle says. “You can’t do it yourself.”</p><p>“I know. And yes.” He remembers the old piano tuner — a man who’d seemed to never have aged, who came around every year to diligently make sure the piano sung the way his eomma wanted it to. “His number should be in the phone book.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The tuner says he’ll come the next day around, which leaves a whole free day together, and for a few minutes they sit around the table together, Jisung coiling the phone line around his finger, humming as he watches the finches pick at the crumbs of their breakfast on the table outside.</p><p>“So what is today’s plan?” Chenle asks, finally, after he’s done tracing a groove on the table’s edge that had been dug by a child with a butter knife twenty years ago.</p><p>“Eh?” Jisung says, snapped out of his empty daydream. “I dunno?”</p><p>Chenle rolls his eyes. “Wow, real helpful there.”</p><p>He searches Chenle’s face for a second, hoping for some sort of clue as to whether he’s joking or not — but he seems serious. Serious and honest, everything open.</p><p>“Oh,” Jisung says. “I really don’t know..”</p><p>“Then let’s go down to the village? You can drop off your peaches. I want to get some more pasta. We can—” he waves his hand “—I dunno, what do you do for fun around here?”</p><p>Jisung shrugs. “Read? Swim? Hike up the mountain? Gorge yourself on fruit? Try not to bake to death?” He pushes a finger against the varnished surface of the table, drawing a straight line across, until he catches Chenle’s attention and Chenle mimics him — touching the tips of their fingers together with a tilt of the head. “We had little transistor radios. I used to sit on the beach with my toes in the sand and listen to the music, imagining I was at the discothèque.”</p><p>“Disco!” Chenle says, and it’s so loud Jisung jumps, breaking their point of contact, breaking the circuit between them. “Sorry. It’s been a while! We should totally go! Is there one near here?”</p><p>“There used to be one on the beach in Monterosso on the second Friday in summer,” Jisung says. He’d go there religiously with his siblings — tugged along by his sisters, then of his own violation as he got older. Bare feet on the soft sand, lights strung up around them, cigarette smoke and wine. Laughing with his head thrown back, the waves crashing against the shore as he snuck into the shadows hand in hand with a boy, the two of them kissing until they were breathless and their hands ran over each other’s back, mouths full of promises of things that would never come to be.</p><p>“We should go,” Chenle repeats. He rests his elbow on the table, propping up his chin. “To your beach, too. You said there was one on your property, right?”</p><p>Jisung hums. “Not really on my property, but yeah, just out at the end of the cliff.” He gestures towards the end of the orchard.</p><p>“Okay,” Chenle says. He hums for a second, thinking. “Okay. You still need to clean. So let’s do this. Let’s go down to the village. Get our errands done. I want to get my sketchbook, anyway. <em>Then</em> we could swim. Or clean for a bit. How do you feel about that?”</p><p>Jisung realises, belatedly, he’d forgotten all about cleaning the house. Chenle had appeared like a flash of light, flooding through his senses and taking everything over. Pushing it all aside like water from a burst dam, clearing out his mind and carrying all the debris of the things that had bothered him with it.</p><p>“Let’s clean tomorrow. So we’re here when the tuner arrives.” Chenle tilts his head. “God, I think this is the most structure I’ve had since I’ve been here. What’re you doing to me?”</p><p>“What am I doing to you? What are you doing to <em>me</em>?” Jisung says with a laugh. “But yeah, that sounds good.”</p><p>“I’m changing your life,” Chenle says. His tone is light and his smile is fond, but even so it causes something to seize in Jisung, like the words carry weight.</p><p>A bird lands on the windowsill, peering in, beak orange like fresh fruit. Jisung glances at it and it begins to sing, and he looks back at Chenle, something warm blooming inside him.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They part at the apex of the hill, Chenle standing outside the narrow staircase that windows up to the front door of his house. A couple walks past, hand in hand, sundresses and tan coloured shorts, their dog trotting along beside them, and as they do Chenle turns back and blows a kiss to Jisung, winking as he pushes open the door to the building.</p><p>He rides that high all the way down the main road, following the path of the stream now covered in concrete, humming to himself as he climbs up a winding set of stairs, clutching at the worn down handrail and ducking into a back alley. He passes a tourist holding a guide pamphlet with a frown and climbs up another set of steps, letting himself into the bottom floor of the building and climbing up the wooden stairs to knock on the door.</p><p>“Come in!”</p><p>The room beyond is fairly small — the same as he remembers it — tile floors and stone walls. There’s an open door to his left and as he waits the same person who’d yelled at him to come in tells him to wait a minute.</p><p>“Sorry,” she says, pulling her hair back into a ponytail as she comes out, barefoot and wearing a white sundress. “We were not expecting you until much later.” She still hasn’t looked at him — she’s glancing back into the doorframe with a frown on her face, and when she finally faces him she tilts her head to the side. “Sorry,” she repeats. “You are…?”</p><p>If Jisung were cooler, or more confident, he’d let her guess, but Eleanora had always been more his elder sister’s friend than his — always far too cool for her baby brother.</p><p>“Ah. Probably not who you’re looking for. Ah, I have fruit here… do you still make juice?”</p><p>“Oh,” she says, her shoulders visibly relaxing. “Oh yes, of course.” She blinks, taking him in, then narrows her eyes. “Jisung? Is that you?”</p><p>“Yeah,” he says, and he smiles, shy, waving. “Hi. It’s me.”</p><p>“Oh my god!” He finds himself swept up in a hug, Eleanora planting a kiss on each of cheeks, then scolding him for not telling her immediately. “I’m sorry, we have someone coming to stay soon, and I thought you were him at first, but you’re way too young, and then I was like ‘isn’t that Jisung Park?’”</p><p>“It’s me,” he says, smile growing wider. “I’m back.”</p><p>“You <em>are</em>! It’s been so long! Even your mother hasn’t been back for over a year. We were all worried something had happened.”</p><p>“Not at all,” Jisung says, as she’s inviting him inside. “I really can’t stay. I’m just here for these,” he holds up his bag. “For old time’s sake.”</p><p>She huffs, hands on her hips, a good twenty centimeters shorter than him but somehow twice as fierce. “You can’t refuse my hospitality.”</p><p>“I’m really, truly sorry,” he says. He knows if he accepts her offer of coffee he’ll be caught up in conversation for at least another hour, and Chenle will probably flat out give up on him at that point. “Maybe when I come back?”</p><p>She narrows her eyes at him. “I’ll hold you to that, Jisung Park.”</p><p>“You’re sounding like my eomma,” he says, unzipping his backpack and handing her the bag of peaches. She takes it from him and eyes him up — again — before laughing.</p><p>“You disappear for six years then try to disappear again? Refusing my hospitality, too.” She sniffs. “It’s fine, I shouldn’t, anyway. We have been so busy lately. There’s so many people around.” She smiles at him, fond, reaching out to touch his cheek for a second. Always the little brother. “It really is good to see you again. Don’t go running away again.”</p><p>“I promise I won’t,” Jisung says. He presses a kiss to her cheek and they exchange goodbyes, Jisung heading back down the steps, back onto into the bright light.</p><p>Next is the grocers, along a narrow brick road, sunlight filtering in, jasmine spilling out of flower baskets, cats lying in the sunspot. He’s stopped on occasion by more people who recognise him — who ask how he’s been. How’s his sister? What’s his eomma up to?</p><p>Good, he’s good. His sister is good — she had her first child, and he’s an uncle now. His mother enjoys it up north, and they go to the lakes in the late summer. Everyone wants to talk, and Jisung finds himself pulled from conversation to conversation — school friends' mothers, the old priest who used to invite their family around for tea on Sundays. It was hard for Jisung to look him in the eye knowing he’d lost his virginity to his son — that he’d gotten sunburn from the brilliant sunshine cutting through the gap in the curtains while they’d lay on the bed together before being called down for dessert.</p><p>His son is in Florence, apparently. He’d studied history, and he wanted to be a teacher. Jisung misses him, ever so briefly — though what he thinks he misses, really, is the feelings he’d had at that age. Where everything was new and bright and every touch felt like a firecracker in his lungs — better than anything he’d ever known.</p><p>Jisung excuses himself from the conversation, thanking him for his time, wincing when he says he’ll see him at mass.</p><p><em>Of course, of course</em>.</p><p>By the time he’s done shopping the church bells have chimed high noon on the hilltop and the sunlight is bright and blinding, almost bleaching out the cobblestones as he wanders back into the plaza. There’s a live band playing in the shade of the houses, and as Jisung stands with a hand to shield his eyes and he searches for Chenle, the accordion croons.</p><p>He spots him, finally, at a table in the front of a caffe by the ramp, bright red umbrella hanging over his head like a blood moon, sunglasses on and crisp white button up shirt billowing in the wind that races across the stones. He has a pencil in his hand and his sketchbook in front of him, but he doesn’t seem to be drawing — just watching, eyes cast out to the railing that separates the caffe from the level below. Posters hang from the rails, blown out like sails in the wind, advertising bands coming to play and upcoming events in the surrounding region — food tastings, wine tours, a discothèque on the beach. Jisung can’t help but laugh when he sees it — it’s the exact same design as it had been ten years ago.</p><p>“Fancy seeing you here,” Jisung says, pulling out a seat beside Chenle and sitting down, reaching for his coffee to take a drink. Chenle smacks his wrist and tells him to get his own, then holds up his sketchbook to him.</p><p>“Look how long I was sitting here,” he says, gesturing to the picture on the page. “I drew the whole plaza <em>and</em> drank two cups of coffee. You torment me.”</p><p>“I kept running into people who knew me when I was a kid. Do you know how awkward it is running into the dad of your first boyfriend? It’s mortifying. And everyone wants to know how my mother is doing.”</p><p>“Your first boyfriend?” Chenle says, eyebrows raised.</p><p>“Priest’s son,” Jisung says, and Chenle laughs.</p><p>“Let me guess, you always used to be very excited to go to Sunday dinners?”</p><p>Jisung holds up his hand, grinning. “Guilty as charged. Eomma thought it was great. My sister <em>definitely </em>knew.”</p><p>“And?”</p><p>He blushes. “She said she’d break his knees if he hurt me.”</p><p>“Oh god. How much older than you is she?”</p><p>“Four years,” Jisung says. “She was scary. My eldest sister is ten years older than me. Then my brothers are six and eight. It was a kid every two years until me.”</p><p>“And then your parents decided it was too much after you were born?”</p><p>“Exactly!” Jisung says. It’s the oft repeated joke — that Jisung was too much to handle. Always sticking his nose where it wasn’t supposed to be, crawling in all the places he shouldn’t be, climbing trees and scaling mountains, coming home covered head to toe in mud and shouting that he was a bog monster. Like his parents had seen he’d be a handful and decided no more. “What about you?”</p><p>“I have an older brother. But he’s so old he’s almost like my uncle, or cousin. He’s fourteen years older than me.”</p><p>“Oh my god. Did your parents just have a lapse of judgement?”</p><p>“Probably decided my brother was too good and they needed to have a disappointing kid to balance it out. You know he’s a doctor.” Chenle scoffs, picking up his coffee and taking a drink. Around them the air is filled with the din of the afternoon chatter and the band keeps playing, laughter like a punctuating beat to every toot of the trumpet. The sky is blue, the flags are red, white and green, and Jisung wants to relax — he wants to drift away, to live in paradise with Chenle forever.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>If there’s a heaven, this is it. In the plaza, walking down to the harbour between the rows of boats. Climbing the hill, the layers of the village growing smaller behind them. The cacti spilling from the rock walls, the grapevines and the dry grass, the blackbirds and the thrushes, the ever present cicada chorus. The ever present sunshine, the ever present dulcet tones of Chenle’s laughter. The warmth of his skin as he lays a hand on Jisung’s bare back, stabilising himself as he stands on his tip-toes to reach up and pluck a peach from the tree.</p><p>“Or do you prefer cherries?” he asks, offering it to Jisung.</p><p>“Anything off the branch is good,” Jisung says, and he thinks how good it would be to kiss him here. The juice runs sticky down his chin and Chenle swipes it away with his fingers, sucking on them afterwards, eyes dark, all the world blurring around them.</p><p>They walk through the orchard together, down the terraces and the steps, Jisung carrying the radio, Chenle carrying a picnic basket full of food, and Chenle makes him name all the trees he’s fallen out of.</p><p>“I don’t climb the fruit trees,” Jisung says, mumbling, kicking through the grass. He’d paid a kid from the village to cut it last week but he hadn’t come this far out, and the orchard is still wild, path overgrown, filled with bees coated in pollen who land on the fat violet petals of the wildflowers, buzzing around them as Chenle stretches his arms out and starts to sing.</p><p>He does that a lot — sings. He’s not a bad singer, seems to stick with the classics, voice full and bright, like he’d swallowed a fistful of sunshine. Singing to the birds, singing to the trees. To the joy of living, like he’s in love with life itself — with the wind and the warmth, with all of mother nature, with the kiss of salt that the ocean brings, with the idea itself of beauty and love. A force of nature in and of himself, kissed by the heavens above, glittering like all the gold in the world.</p><p>The gate to the cliff is jammed open, white paint worn down, and as they emerge onto the edge of the rocks Chenle gasps, running to the edge off the path to peer at where the dirt falls away into rocks.</p><p>“Oh my god, this is <em>yours</em>?” he asks, turning back around to gape at Jisung.</p><p>“Yeah,” Jisung says. “They think whoever lived here in the 1800’s carved it. It’s nuts, isn’t it? I’ve spent weeks on the beach.”</p><p>Chenle isn’t listening. He’s already running down the steps, one hand on the metal railing, picnic basket swinging from his other arm.</p><p>It <em>is </em>a rather impressive staircase. The cliff is fairly sheer, continuing further to the right side, sweeping out to shelter the beach, curving inward on the left to form a cove. The staircase runs over the rocks, zig-zagging left and right before it reaches the rounded pebbles of the beach. To their left the tip of the rocks that mark the start of the harbour are visible, and in front of them is endless blue — sapphire shaded waters of the Ligurian Sea only broken by a few fishing boats. The waves crash against the rocks and the smell of salt is thick and strong, the sun bright and clean.</p><p>“Don’t forget your sun lotion,” Jisung shouts, even as Chenle jumps onto the rocks with a laugh.</p><p>“Right, right,” he shouts back, dropping the basket on the ground and clacking across the rocks. “Trust me, I won’t. I’ve already had my sunburn of the season. Ended up lying in bed for a good three days rotating aloe applications.”</p><p>“Eomma used to tell me all my skin would fall off if I didn’t apply it,” Jisung says, and he’s far enough down the stairs he doesn’t need to shout now — the boom of the breakers won’t drown him out.</p><p>“Mine just let me live with the consequences,” Chenle says, holding up the bottle for him. “Here, slap me.” And he turns around, arms outstretched, wiggling his fingers as he continues to talk. “I haven’t swum in the ocean for so long.”</p><p>“Mmhm,” Jisung hums, not entirely concentrating on Chenle’s words, mostly just focused on the way his muscles feel beneath his sunscreen slick fingers. The way they contract, the way he shudders beneath his touch. How warm his skin is, how Jisung could touch him forever. He rubs down his back, digging the heels of his palm into his spine as he does so, and then Chenle turns around, grinning at him, all wicked and bright.</p><p>“You wanna do my chest too?”</p><p>“Can’t you do that yourself?” Jisung says, stuttering. The sky is bright and clear and the sea is endless, and it feels like the whole world belongs to them — like this is their Eden.</p><p>“I could,” Chenle says, tilting his head to the side. “But I want you to.”</p><p>And Jisung does. He can feel the flush rise in his cheeks, the redness spreading to the tips of his ears. He’s sure it’s on his chest too, though he doesn’t think about that. He just tries to focus on Chenle. He just tries — tries, like it’s not the easiest thing in the world. Like Chenle isn’t his everything, the focal point of his world, something he’ll never get tired of looking at.</p><p>It starts normal. Slapping the sun lotion across his skin, rubbing it in with the point of his fingers. Across his chest and his stomach, feeling his ribs out. Going back over the spots he’d missed, and when his palm grazes Chenle’s nipple he hears it — the light noise, a hiss tapered into a tiny moan.</p><p>“Sorry,” Jisung murmurs, and when he glances up at Chenle’s face he’s not smirking anymore. His eyelashes flutter and his breath hitches — chest jumping under Jisung’s touch, lips slightly parted in a silent question. “Chenle?” Jisung asks.</p><p>Chenle shuts his eyes, slow, breathing in, chest expanding. Jisung can feel his heart beneath his hand, heavy and hard, like wild horses crashing across a plane, and then Chenle’s eyes flutter open and Jisung can see the sun captured within, warm and dark, endless, sinking into him.</p><p>“Hi,” Chenle says. Cupping the back of his neck — and then he’s leaning in to kiss him.</p><p>It’s better than Jisung could have ever imagined. Chenle’s other hand slides up to cup his jaw and the rocks are hot beneath the bare soles of his feet and the sun beats down and Jisung melts into it, dropping his hands to Chenle’s waist, hardly believing this is real.</p><p>It can’t be real, can it? Chenle crowds into him, no hesitation, lips soft, kisses tinged with the sweet taste of peach juice. His touch is gentle and Jisung feels like he’s spinning, like he’s flown off the planet, like he’s a bird in the sky wheeling endlessly. This must be heaven — he’s found it. He’s found it in Chenle, in the sigh he lets out against his lips, in the way his hand runs through his hair, the press of his mouth. He kisses him over and over, until he thinks he’s about to go mad, desire clotting thick through his veins, and Chenle pulls back, peppering kisses all over the corners of his mouth, across his jaw, his cheek, everywhere he can reach, until he’s panting, smiling, giddiness bubbling up inside him.</p><p>“I’ve wanted to do that since I met you,” Chenle says, and it lights a spark within Jisung. He doesn’t have words for the feeling — only that it’s all consuming, surging through him like a cork popping from a bottle, like the pressure is suddenly too much.</p><p>Better to speak with his body — to let Chenle know he feels the same way. One hand on his jaw, sticky and greasy, tilting his face up to kiss him again, the other on his hip, thumb pressed against the jut of his hip bone. Kisses like a secret language. Something of their own creation, that might fade to the wind if they don’t capture it here and now. The waves crash and Jisung thinks he could do this forever and want for nothing more. He thinks he could cease to be, washed away by the tides, the two of them tangled up like strands of kelp in the deep blue. Melting away like salt in the rain, returned to the earth below.</p><p>“Do you know how infuriating you are?” Chenle asks, and he breaks away, kissing down Jisung’s jaw, mouthing at his skin.</p><p>“No?” Jisung says, weak.</p><p>“You just—” he exhales, a sharp puff of air as he noses along his jawline, licking at the underside of his chin “—you just walk around looking like that.”</p><p>“I’m not—” Jisung starts, and then he’s cut off, thought half finished, Chenle’s lips on his again. Kissing at his bottom lip, nipping, sucking it into his mouth then swiping his tongue across it. Jisung lets him in and everything devolves. Everything is sticky and sweet and Jisung never wants to leave.</p><p>Maybe he never could. When they break apart it’s breathless and brief, and Jisung can’t help but chase Chenle. He can’t help but steal another kiss from him, dip down to his jaw. Suck a mark into his skin, working his teeth against the soft side of his neck.</p><p>“Jisung,” Chenle says. “God. Wait, I actually want to swim.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>If there’s a heaven, then <em>this</em> is it. Seafoam and salt in their mouths, hair dripping, sun blinding. Chenle hooks his arms around Jisung’s neck and kisses him and he feels like if he speaks butterflies will burst forth, a kaleidoscope of brilliance that won’t even begin to encompass the sheer joy that explodes from within him.</p><p>He’s floating, he’s drifting. Waves on the rocks, glint of the boats in the harbour. Gulls wheeling above, blue around him, blue above him, close your eyes and you might fall into the sky. Chenle dives under and pulls his feet out from under him, and he falls under, opening his eyes despite the sting, everything blurry and crazed, like a daydream, like he’s living in an 80’s movie, viewing it all through a vaseline smeared lens.</p><p>Take a picture. Make a memory. Inscribe the shape of Chenle’s lips against his senses. The way he laughs before he kisses him, everything like a movie reel.</p><p>“You’re stunning,” Chenle says. “You’re the most stunning person I’ve ever seen. I saw you in the shade of that willow tree and all I could think about was kissing you.”</p><p>And the radio croons, and the sand sticks to his hands and he’s lying on his back and Chenle’s weight on him is stunningly real and yet it still feels like a dream. Like he’s cutting through the clouds. Like his skin between his fingertips might fall to dust if he doesn’t fight to stay here, and Chenle whispers to him: “Relax,” and brushes his fingers across his lips. “Are you okay?”</p><p>“I don’t think you’re real,” Jisung says, and it comes out a little raw.</p><p>“I’m real,” Chenle says. He slides his hand along the length of Jisung’s arm, until he can hold his hand, tangle their fingers together and squeeze. “A hundred percent real. Promise you.”</p><p>“I’ve never wanted someone this much,” Jisung says. It feels like it tumbles out of him, like he can’t control it. His hands rest on Chenle’s waist and he can’t stop staring. He’s a marvel, all tan and dripping with sea water, his waist fit perfectly beneath his grip. “It’s — it’s hard to think about.”</p><p>“It’s okay,” Chenle says, “I get it. Trust me. I — sorry, this is a weird question to ask when I’m sitting on you but. Can I draw you?”</p><p>Jisung hesitates — if only for a second. Immortalised not only in Chenle’s mind but on the paper. He’s been thinking about buying a disposable camera, too — but this is somehow more intimate.</p><p>“Yes,” he says. Chenle brushes his thumb against his cheek and squeezes his hand.</p><p>“Thank you,” he says. When Chenle kisses him Jisung forgets all the fears he’s ever had.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They spend the late afternoon in the shade together, sitting under the branches of an oak tree, butterflies floating around them, light hazy, heat so oppressive Jisung seriously considers washing out the stone pool that’s currently filled with pond scum. When he was younger he used to play in it, swimming and splashing, his sisters with their long legs tanning on the stone tile beside him, watching beneath their sunshades. The sunflowers staring at him, the birds in the sky. Now it’s dirty and gross, and the faces of the lions carved into the stone drip with green.</p><p>Try as he might, Jisung can’t sleep. It’s lazy and hot but he’s perpetually aware of Chenle’s presence beside him. Having retrieved his sketchbook, Chenle treats Jisung to music of the steady scratch of the pencil on the paper, and every time he looks up Chenle smiles at him, warm and welcoming, kilometers of bare skin that if he stares at him for too long become all he can see. Like a star map — little moles that Jisung wants to kiss.</p><p>What was it they said? That where your moles were was where lovers in a past life had kissed you? Chenle didn’t have many — only around his collarbones, that cluster on his neck, one on his right pectoral, the three around his navel. Jisung thinks he should make up for that — spend all his time showering him in kisses, so that if he ever left this world anyone who saw him would know just how loved he’d been.</p><p>“You’re so cute when you smile,” Chenle says, and he tilts his head to the side, hair fluffy from where Jisung had rucked his hands through it. Pushed up against the warm wall on the south side of the house, hidden under the awnings, shutters closed, flower box overflowing and crawling across the ground like it might rise up and wrap around them. To be worn like a cape, all the bright colours of the summer painted onto their skin.</p><p>Jisung doesn’t know how to respond. He just sniffs, scrunching his nose, momentarily distracted by a fat bumblebee which lands on the end of Chenle’s pencil, its legs coated in pollen.</p><p>“Hello, hello,” Chenle says, and he sees the bee too — makes sure to hold his pencil carefully still as it turns around on the tip, twitching its wings. “It’s okay,” he murmurs. “Take your time.”</p><p>There’s a gentleness in it. Jisung doesn’t like bees — he’d been stung far too many times as a kid — and though he tries to keep calm he can feel his palms start to clam, his whole body seizing up as Chenle coos at the bee until it flies away.</p><p>“Not your favourite animal?” Chenle asks, no trace of mockery in his voice. Jisung shakes his head. “That’s alright. I like them. Do you like spiders? Because I don’t like spiders. I can deal with the bees, but I’ll scream if I see a spider.”</p><p>“I don’t like spiders,” Jisung says. “I don’t really like any insects. Oh, especially scorpions.”</p><p>Chenle wrinkles his nose. “I found a scorpion in my shower once. I almost called my landlord to get him to take it out.”</p><p>“They’re so scary,” Jisung says, whining a little bit. His brothers had made him terrified of finding scorpions in his boots, so much so that for years he’d stuffed them with newspaper when he wasn’t wearing them, just to make sure anything eight-legged didn’t build a home inside.</p><p>“It was tiny,” Chenle says, holding out his hand and approximating a size no bigger than a bottlecap. “I ended up sweeping it up into a cup and walking down to the street to let it go.” He shivers. “Never again. You’re definitely the one who has to deal with the bugs.”</p><p>“No, no, no,” Jisung says. “No, you can’t make me do that!”</p><p>“Then we’ll just be engulfed by them! We’ll have a bug problem if neither of us can take them outside!”</p><p>“But you just said you did it!”</p><p>“Only in the direst of situations!”</p><p>“And having a bunch of bugs in our hypothetical home isn’t dire?”</p><p>He’s aware how ridiculous this is — how it’s skirting towards danger. The stupidity of talking about potentially living with Chenle, like hadn’t met only a few days ago, like they weren’t near strangers. And yet there was a thrill in it all — in imagining a future that didn’t end when Chenle went back to Rome. A future that had both of them together, in some way or another. Waking up beside him forever and ever.</p><p>"Perhaps we'll call the exterminator then."</p><p>"Fine," Chenle says. He sounds haughty, but he's grinning, twirling his pencil around in the air, tracing invisible patterns. “Detour over. Go back to sleep, Jisung.”</p><p>“I can’t sleep,” Jisung mumbles, even as he’s crossing his arms over his chest and closing his eyes again, insects droning on around him.</p><p>“You looked like you were.”</p><p>“Just resting my eyes,” Jisung says. Drifting in and out of a daydream, not wanting to let sleep take him over in case he wakes up and finds this all isn’t true.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He does fall asleep — eventually — waking in the late afternoon to find Chenle has suffered the same fate as him. Propped up against the trunk of the tree, pencil drooping from his hands, eyes shut in serenity. Again he’s struck at how peaceful Chenle appears to be when he sleeps, like all that perpetual motion catches up with him. The sun always burns, but when the moon is out it must rest.</p><p>His sketchbook is in his hand. Open on a page Jisung can’t see from where he’s lying. Jisung sits up, brushing the dirt off his arms, stretching and yawning.</p><p>Chenle doesn’t wake. His lips are slightly parted and a butterfly lands on the top of his head, iridescent blue wings shimmering as it slowly opens and closes them, like it’s flying in impossible slow motion.</p><p>It’s like a Disney princess moment — just for a second, the butterfly taking off when Jisung shifts slightly and props himself up a little more.</p><p>“Wait,” he murmurs, but it’s gone, fluttering off, headed further down the garden to where the wildflowers have begun to reclaim everything.</p><p>Chenle stirs when he gets closer, shifting, shrugging his shoulders, then dropping his pencil. It hits the book with a soft thud and his eyes blink open, unfocused and bleary before zeroing in on Jisung.</p><p>He feels like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar, though he’s not entirely sure why. He hadn’t even been doing anything — just looking at him.</p><p>“There was a butterfly on your head,” Jisung says. Chenle blinks, bleary, smile tugging at the corner of his lips.</p><p>“Was it pretty?”</p><p>“It was bright blue. I wish you could have seen.”</p><p>Chenle scrunches his eyes shut, yawning widely and blinking, shaking his hair out. “I believe you. One landed on your nose while you were asleep. I was so scared you’d wake up.”</p><p>“Oh,” Jisung says, and as Chenle looks at him, gaze open and soft, he’s struck with a burning desire to kiss him. Not even a desire — a <em>need</em>. He moves through the grass, covering the half meter between them, and as he’s leaning up to kiss him Chenle leans down, meeting him halfway.</p><p>It’s sweet. Sweet and gentle, like hummingbird wings, buzzing softly around them. Chenle tilts his face up with the tips of his fingers and there’s a silence — only the birds singing, that same eternal stillness that seems to encompass him every time he kisses Chenle.</p><p>They break apart and there’s a second where they both stare at each other, neither of them wanting to break the moment. Chenle lifts a finger and traces his lips — not quite touching him, like he’s scared that if he does it’ll all break apart.</p><p>“Do you want to see what I drew?” Chenle asks, and when Jisung opens his mouth to respond he rests his thumb on his lower lip.</p><p>“Mmhmm,” Jisung says, kissing the pad of his thumb.</p><p>“Here,” Chenle says. “C’mere.” He pats his lap, and it takes a second for Jisung to realise what he wants — for him to sit between his legs, his spine against his bare stomach, Chenle's arms wrapped around his torso. Chenle kisses the top of his head and Jisung closes his eyes, just for a moment, soaking it all in before he opens them to the blinding sunlight again. Dragonflies drift around them and the wind whispers love poems, and Jisung lets a lazy smile take him over.</p><p>“Show me,” he says, running his fingers along Chenle’s arm, tracing around the knob of his wrist bone, moving down to press against the tendons in his hand.</p><p>Chenle entertains him for a moment, spreading his fingers out with an uncharacteristic but enchanting laziness, and in turn Jisung lifts his hand to his lips to press a kiss to it. His heart hammers away, and he can't see Chenle's face — he fears he's taking it too far. What if this is too much, too casual? Too needlessly romantic, like Jisung has fallen off the edge but Chenle has chosen not to follow. Maybe he wasn't on the same page, maybe it was just a few fun kisses — and with these come a hundred other nervous thoughts that stop their screams the second Chenle places his sketchbook in Jisung's lap.</p><p>When he sees what Chenle had been working on he falls silent.</p><p>It's him. Asleep, eyes shut. Rough lines but still so utterly soft, like Chenle sees him in the same golden light he himself exudes. One hand on his chest and the other on his stomach, and this sleeping Jisung has such a serenity that through the page alone the waking Jisung feels it, and then he wonders — is this how Chenle sees him?</p><p>It must be an embellishment. Something for the sake of art, right? No-one in the world could look like this — could almost shimmer even immortalised in graphite and paper.</p><p>"Do you like it?" Chenle asks, and there's a quiver in his voice. Nervousness? For what? It's beautiful. So much so that Jisung doesn't even know how to answer, because how does he speak to someone who sees him this way? He's worried that if he opens his mouth he'll ruin the image Chenle has of him — remind him that he's only human.</p><p>"Yeah," Jisung says, swallowing around the lump in his throat. "Do I really look like that?"</p><p>"I—" Chenle stutters. "I tried my best."</p><p>"No," Jisung says, and he still can't take his eyes off the picture. "No, it's not like that. I think you do me too much of a favour."</p><p>"Oh." He gets it. "I don't think I do you enough of a favour, to be honest."</p><p>He takes the book and flips it back a page again, to an even messier sketch of Jisung that's composed almost entirely of rough lines, the form of his body as it reaches up to pick a bunch of cherries from the tree.</p><p>A bird lands in the tree above and begins to sing and Jisung takes a long breath, feeling a strange glow expand in him.</p><p>"You make me want to draw you forever," Chenle says. "I don't know why. I—I've never met anyone like you. I don't get attached to drawing people but—" he stops, flipping the book shut all of a sudden, like the snap of the cover closing everything held within was also a lid pressed down on the conversation. "Sorry." A full stop.</p><p>"Sorry for what?"</p><p>"I didn't mean to be so weird."</p><p>"You're not weird," Jisung says. "You're like. The opposite. Do you really mean that, though?"</p><p>"Of course I mean that."</p><p>"Why?"</p><p>"Why what?"</p><p>The surf breaks in the far distance. A butterfly lands on Chenle's hand — again. Jisung has no idea why so many of them are around. "Why am I different?" Jisung asks. He really doesn't get it. Chenle must have met thousands of people in Rome, people far more interesting than a country boy from Liguria, a boy with no direction in life who wore the same four pairs of shorts every day and whose only talent was he knew how to cook and do a perfect pirouette.</p><p>Knew. Paste tense. Once upon a time it had come to him as easily as breathing. These days that kind of grace is a distant memory.</p><p>"Why are any of us?" He feels Chenle shrug behind him, his hands wrapping around his front to grasp Jisung's own. He squeezes tight. "It was like I saw you and I knew. It was like a revelation, a bolt from the heavens. I wanted to know you forever, draw you forever. I still worry that forever wouldn't be enough.” He pauses. The butterfly leaves, creamy white, like a puff of cloud in the clear sky. “I— I know that's a lot. It's just. I don't know how else to describe it. I feel like for the first time my art is failing me, too, because I can't even <em>draw </em>how you make me feel."</p><p>Jisung doesn't know what to say. He can't believe Chenle had been <em>thinking</em> all this — all while he was telling jokes and throwing things at him and eating all his food and running through the woods like the devil was at his heels. All this in parallel. All this happening at once. Jisung lifts his hand to his mouth and kisses it — again, kiss after kiss, one to each of his knuckles, slow, savoury, the world moving so slow he wonders if the sun is going backwards.</p><p>"I know we just met," Chenle says. His free hand — the one not under Jisung’s lips — strokes up and down his side. "But I feel like I've known you forever. Like these last few days were entire years.”</p><p>“Me too,” Jisung says, and it’s almost terrifying to open himself up. He’s always had a full heart — the kind that overflowed from his mouth when he couldn’t contain it, ‘I love you’s stained with his own blood — but to be so raw in a place so safe, to be so raw in the arms of someone like this, in the twittering birdsong with his childhood home behind him and no-one else around. It feels like laying his armour down, exposing himself and handing Chenle the knife.</p><p><em>Strike me</em>, he thinks. <em>Strike me and have this be done with. Let this consume me before I go mad. Before I have to lose you. Before you’ve given me something so good I know I can never go back.</em></p><p>Chenle’s knuckles brush up and down his side. Jisung tenses, but no blow ever comes.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. more than that</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I want fish,” Chenle says, out of blue and completely at odds with the fact he’s currently poking a boiling potato in preparation for the gnocchi they’re making. “Can we have fish?”</p><p>It’s late evening. The sky isn’t quite dark yet — still streaked with indigo and fire, the sun still barely holding on — but it’s dark enough the two of them had come inside and started to cook.</p><p>“Right now?” Jisung asks. He’s busy slicing up the cabbage he’d bought in preparation for making kimchi, only keeping half an eye on Chenle’s antics, which mostly involve searching through the cupboards and lamenting his lack of kitchen utensils.</p><p>"Yes right now," Chenle says, stabbing the fork through the potato then grunting. "Of course not right now, idiot. Do you ever go fishing in the sea?"</p><p>"Appa used to," Jisung says. The chop chop of the knife on the cutting board is rhythmic, and at this point he's in a steady groove, working his way through each head of cabbage with an ease. He knows his mother wouldn't particularly approve of this method — hers involved having all the kids sit on the floor and carefully coat the leaves with salt, and then pepper paste, bit by bit, but Jisung's just one man, not a superhuman woman with five kids to help her, so he's taking the easy way out.</p><p>"And you didn't?"</p><p>Jisung shrugs. "My siblings like fishing better. My eldest sister, especially. One of the first ever pictures of her they took was her holding up a tiny little fish with the biggest grin on her face."</p><p>Chenle snorts. "That's actually pretty cute."</p><p>Chop, chop, chop. Jisung sweeps the cabbage into a tub and picks the next one up, cutting it down the stem then pulling it apart with his hands. Chenle pokes the potato again, then, apparently deciding it's done, he flips the stove off and drags the saucepan towards the sink.</p><p>"Help me drain this?" he asks.</p><p>"The lid should be in the cupboard."</p><p>"Wow," Chenle says with a laugh. He ducks down and opens the cupboards, whining about the disarray until he finds the scratched up and soot stained lid that fits the saucepan, then proceeds to drain out most of the water from the pan and place the potatoes in a bowl to cool on the countertop.</p><p>"I'm buying fish," Chenle says, wrapping his arms around Jisung's torso and hooking his chin over his shoulder. It makes him jump, briefly, which is a worry considering he's handling a large knife, but no foul comes of it, and Jisung relaxes into the warmth of his body, swaying to the tune he's humming.</p><p>"Okay," he says. "And we're cooking that at your place, are we?"</p><p>"Or we could bring it up here. I know the fishermen come up every afternoon to sell their catch. I always hear them yelling in the plaza — 'Fresh fish! Fresh fish!'"</p><p>"And have you bought any?"</p><p>"I have. Lots of cod. Some mullet. Fresh crab meat and shrimps and—” he stops and laughs. “Listen. I need to stop talking or I'll start drooling. It's all so fresh up here, it's unbelievable. I thought there'd be no difference — most of the stuff in Rome is fresh too since we're so close to the coast, but it really is incredible."</p><p>"Why're you asking me to cook for you when you've already tried it?"</p><p>"Because it tastes better when it's cooked by the hand of someone you like?"</p><p>Jisung pauses, knife poised high, about to come down on a lump of cabbage. "You like me?"</p><p>Chenle presses a light kiss to the side of his neck. "Is that so hard to believe? That I like you?"</p><p>Yes? No? How does he even answer that? Yes, he's still in disbelief that someone as ever burning as Chenle could <em>want</em> him. No, the way Chenle's acting makes him believe it in some way or another, but maybe Jisung also doesn't want to accept it. It's that dangerous teetering — his dream that was becoming a reality, that was filling in with sickening clarity. Like when he was in London, when he’d received his offer for the premier dance company — when he’d finally begun to accept it and edge past that disbelief then suddenly he’d been limping onstage at graduation, watching the prospect pass him by before it even became a reality.</p><p>If this became real, then his feelings were real, and if his feelings were real then saying goodbye would hurt a thousand times more — broken arrowheads snapped in his back, bleeding out like a soldier on the battlefield. He’s been hurt before. He doesn’t know if he can do it again.</p><p>"No," Jisung says, and the knife goes down again. Chop, chop. "Just. It's strange to think so."</p><p>"Don't think it's strange."</p><p>"It feels so," Jisung says. Chenle's grip tightens, then loosens, and then he's worming his hands under Jisung's shirt and splaying them across his stomach.</p><p>"Like I said. Don't." He nuzzles his lips at Jisung's neck again, humming, swaying, music in his bones. "Do you need my help with anything? While I wait for the potatoes to cool?"</p><p>"There's not much else to be done for a while," Jisung says. "I only have a little bit more to chop up, then it needs to soak for a bit."</p><p>"So you mean I can distract you?" Chenle says, a laugh bubbling up in him. "Like this?" His hands dip lower, pushing against the waistband of his shorts, and Jisung shivers, trying to shrug him off, trying with all his might not to think about the pinpricks of heat that burst all over his skin.</p><p>"I would prefer if you didn't," Jisung murmurs. “At least not while I’m holding a knife.”</p><p>He scrapes the cabbage off into the pot and gets to the last half of the head, chopping quickly. It's nice to be back in the kitchen, especially <em>his</em> kitchen. His flat in London was tiny — only enough elbow room to make the most basic of dishes, and to be free like this, to have so much space to just spread out, to have the gas stovetop back and all his pots and pans and eomma's old potato ricer and blender and the stand mixer sitting in the corner. It's good. It's nice.</p><p>"That's no fun," Chenle mumbles, but he stops fiddling — he leaves his fingers where they are, singing under his breath as he watches Jisung continue chopping the cabbage up.</p><p>It's nice. Domestic in a way, Chenle's warmth a soothing presence against his back as he works. It's something Jisung knows he could get used to — and there it is again. This planning for a future that didn't exist.</p><p>"You're good at this," Chenle says. "Kind of scaring me with how fast you're swinging that knife, but good."</p><p>"I've been doing it my whole life," Jisung says. Chenle huffs a laugh, vibrating against him.</p><p>"Yeah? You like cooking, huh?"</p><p>"Dance first, cooking second, violin third," Jisung says. "My three loves."</p><p>"Dance?"</p><p>"I was going to be a dancer," Jisung says. He bunches up the cabbage with the flat of the blade, forming a mound before he turns it sideways and starts to chop it up again. "Going to be being the operative word. That's why I went to London. I got my degree and had a career lined up and…" He stops chopping, feeling the frustration well up within him, tears that bite at the back of his throat. It's been almost three years since he broke his leg and it still stings, raw and dark in his heart.</p><p>"You don't need to talk about it if you don't want to," Chenle says. "It's okay."</p><p>"It's okay,” Jisung says. He swallows the tears and brings the knife down again. “I fell down the stairs in my flat and broke my leg a few weeks out from my graduation ceremony. Six months plus recovery, and the end of my professional career."</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Chenle says. “That sucks.”</p><p>He shrugs. “I mean there’s nothing you can do, right? I was angry for a while. But I realised being angry wouldn’t fix it so I just got on with life.”</p><p>It’s a lie. One he’s told himself for a long time — the one he’d held onto as he’d had to make phone calls with tears in his throat to tell people that no, he couldn’t accept their offer to audition for their team. No, he’s sorry. He can’t defer. Yes, he’s serious. He was injured. Yes, thanks for their sympathy. Hanging the phone up afterwards and sitting down on the couch and trying not to cry, his boyfriend coming home to find him with his head in his hands and his eyes red and bloodshot.</p><p>There had to be a reason for it, right?</p><p>“Still. If that’s your dream.”</p><p>“Not everything is straight and narrow,” Jisung says, and it’s the same lie. Trying to convince himself it happened for a reason. “I guess life decided I needed a wrench in the works.”</p><p>“Life is chaotic,” Chenle says. “It doesn’t make sense. That’s so fucking unfair. I shut my fingers in a car door once and broke them and it was pure agony not being able to draw while they were taped together. I can’t even imagine having to give it up forever.”</p><p>“I didn’t have to give it up. I can still dance. Just — not to the level I needed to.”</p><p>There’s no cabbage left to chop. He sweeps up the last of it into the tub.</p><p>“Do you still dance?”</p><p>Jisung swallows. He lays the knife flat down on the cutting board and wipes his hands on his shirt, forgetting that Chenle still has his arms around his waist, bumping against him for a second. “Sometimes. I did Salsa for a while, but my partner moved back home.”</p><p>“Your partner?”</p><p>“Oh. Not like that. My dancing partner. We weren’t — we weren’t dating. She was a lesbian. You know, gay-lesbian solidarity?”</p><p>Chenle laughs. “I get the concept.”</p><p>“She was nice,” Jisung says, with a sigh. “We used to send letters a lot but I kind of stopped. I should tell her I got a new address.”</p><p>“Yes, you should,” Chenle agrees. His fingers play with the drawstrings on Jisung’s shorts, lips hot against his neck. “Are you done cooking?” he murmurs.</p><p>“I need to salt the cabbage and leave it to sit but after that, yeah. It should be done for a while.”</p><p>“Well let’s do that then?”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Chenle helps him with the salt and draining the water, and the two of them walk back to the lounge, throwing open the folding doors and letting the night air in, the drone of the cicadas and lingering birdsong forming a perfect background for Chenle to pull him down onto the couch — to not even bother with small talk before he kisses him.</p><p>It’s easy. It’s easy and it’s good, Chenle’s hands warm on his back, pushing his shirt up as he explores his skin. Jisung braces his knees on either side of him and they lie like that for a long time — kissing without words, just occasional giggles as Chenle turns his face the wrong way, or when Jisung accidentally elbows him, or when one of them makes a funny noise, the wet slurp as they part, spit smeared all over lips, the two of them panting and breathless.</p><p>“Fuck,” Chenle says, dropping his hand to his side, Jisung’s shirt dropping back down with it. “God. Would you believe after all that I still want more?”</p><p>“We should check on the food,” Jisung says. “But I know. I get it.”</p><p>“Food,” Chenle echoes. “I kinda just want to eat you instead.”</p><p>If Jisung wasn’t already flushed all over his body, he’s sure he would have turned scarlet at the words — at the thought of Chenle wanting to devour him. Instead he turns his head sideways, not wanting to face the intensity of Chenle’s gaze, and mumbles: “Don’t say that.”</p><p>“What, you don’t like it?” Chenle’s other hand trails up and down his spine.</p><p>“No,” Jisung says. An owl hoots outside. “I do. It’s just embarrassing.”</p><p>“If you don’t like it, I won’t say it.”</p><p>“I do like it. I’m still just trying to cope with the whole ‘you actually want to kiss me’ thing.”</p><p>“Well I do want to kiss you,” Chenle says, and he lifts his head up to plant a chaste kiss on Jisung’s lips. “I could kiss you for hours and never be tired.” He fits his fingers into the knobs of Jisung’s spine, his other hand coming up to rest on his hip. “You’re incredible, Jisung. Believe me. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe it.”</p><p>“Okay,” Jisung says, swallowing. He still doesn’t get off Chenle. He doesn’t really want to. His mind is whirring, and he never wants to leave. Chenle’s hand is a solid weight on his back — his body a warm presence beneath him. He feels enveloped in him, and it’s all he could ever want. He leans down to press another kiss to his lips and Chenle pulls at him with the hand on his back, forcing their bodies together, deepening their kiss and running his hand through his hair.</p><p>“Let me show you.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They get back to the kitchen eventually — between Chenle’s hands firmly not leaving Jisung’s waist and Jisung pushing him up against the wall in the hallway to steal a kiss — and Jisung tosses the cabbage and gets to helping Chenle with preparing the dough.</p><p>Honestly, it’s a bit of a show watching him use the potato ricer. His biceps bulge as he squeezes it and Jisung is very happy to lean against the counter and enjoy the ride — admiring the bulge of his veins in his hands and the way his tendons stand out as he grunts and rices a handful of the potatoes.</p><p>Sweat shines on his forehead by the time he’s done, but he holds up the bowl with pride, tilting his head to the side and indicating for Jisung to get the flour. They prepare the dough together, Chenle quizzing him about food and recipes and how much cooking he’s done, Jisung happy to answer.</p><p>They roll the dough out, chopping it up into pieces, Chenle hauling out the biggest pot from the cupboard and filling it up with water, turning the gas on high until the water starts to boil and they can begin to cook.</p><p>“I actually haven’t made gnocchi in years,” Chenle admits, dropping a handful of pieces into the water. Beside him Jisung turns the heat on low and starts to melt the butter in the sauce pan, adding a fistful of sage he’d picked from the overflowing herb garden earlier and starting to stir.</p><p>“Don’t say that too loud or they’ll revoke your citizenship,” Jisung says with a snort.</p><p>“It just takes so long! And my apartment is small! I get flour everywhere and I was too lazy to buy a potato ricer so I used to just <em>bzzzt</em> it with the hand mixer, which I’m sure is illegal or something.”</p><p>Jisung snorts, stirring the butter with the spatula. “I think it’s only illegal if you buy pre-packaged.”</p><p>“I haven’t stopped that low yet, thankfully,” he says. “How much of this are we making? Your fridge works, right? We can freeze the rest.”</p><p>“Yes the fridge works,” Jisung says. “Do about half of it, I think. I am <em>so </em>hungry right now I could seriously just eat the dough.”</p><p>“That bad, huh?” Chenle says, laughing. He stays beside the pot, though he rests his hand on the small of Jisung’s back, and watches him stir the butter to stop it from browning, until the gnocchi starts to float up and he has to grab the slotted spoon to transfer it to the pan.</p><p>It cooks up well, Chenle helping grate the parmesan before they transfer it to a plate for each of them, garnishing with tomatoes Jisung had bought at the market and eating it right there and then, standing over the counter with only their fingers, smell of cooking butter and sage in the air and the crickets singing outside. Jisung finishes his plate first, and when he starts to stare at Chenle’s, Chenle just lifts a piece up and feeds it to him, allowing him to take it from him with his lips and chew, the pasta melting on his tongue.</p><p>“Should we cook more?” Chenle asks, watching him like a hawk.</p><p>“No, it’s okay. We can have the rest tomorrow.”</p><p>“Okay,” Chenle says, chewing, popping a cherry tomato into his mouth, his eyes only briefly leaving Jisung’s face. He picks up another piece of gnocchi and looks to go eat it himself, before he reaches out. Jisung opens his mouth without thinking and Chenle presses it inside, finger lingering on Jisung’s bottom lip for a second, their eye contact crackling even as Jisung chews slowly on the pasta, his breath slightly laboured at the heat of Chenle’s touch on him.</p><p>“Thanks,” Jisung says.</p><p>Chenle smiles, cupping his cheek and leaning in to press a kiss to his lips. “You’re welcome.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>After eating they finish making the kimchi — mixing the pepper paste and smearing it all over the leaves, then sealing it in tubs and sticking it in the old fridge. In a moment that had almost ended in disaster Chenle had pointed out the fridge wasn’t plugged in, and Jisung had had to crawl behind it and get a faceful of cobwebs as he’d scrambled to stick the plug into the wall. They cleaned the dishes next — Jisung manning the sink and throwing the dish towel at Chenle and telling him to dry. Chenle had responded by picking up the bubbles in the sink and throwing them at him, a move which had resulted in all out war, until the sink was almost overflowing and they’d both been left with sopping wet shirts and dish soap dripping down their chins.</p><p>When Chenle drops into his lap it’s almost midnight. They’ve both been reading for the past hour, Chenle going through the leftover magazines, Jisung reading a Korean novel he’d picked from the bookshelf at random.</p><p>“Whatchu doing?” Chenle asks, and when Jisung looks up at him his eyes are full of mischief.</p><p>“Reading,” Jisung says, holding up the novel. Chenle peers over at it, brow scrunching for a second before he blinks rapidly and looks back at Jisung.</p><p>“I… I thought you’d be reading in Italian for some reason.”</p><p>Jisung snorts. “I think the only reason for my grasp on the Korean language is the rabid amount of books I consumed as a child. Eomma made sure of that. She was always ringing back home — or getting appa to — to get the rest of the family to mail us books.” He takes on his mother’s tone of voice, switching to Korean: “<em>Jisung keeps reading them all! I caught him with a flashlight last night, sneaking into the living room!</em>” He giggles. “She’d always be yelling down the phone about how much I read. Pleading for more books because I’d read all the ones in the house five times and had almost read everything age appropriate at the local library. She was proud, though. She read a lot too, and I think she liked that I took after her.”</p><p>“You talk about your mother so much,” Chenle says, wry amusement obvious on his face.</p><p>“We get along,” Jisung says with a shrug. He’d called her when they’d gotten back to the house — while Chenle was busy running around the orchard, only a few minutes taken out of their lives to catch up with her, to tell her about the boy he’d met who seemed to defy all logic.</p><p>“He’s only here for a few weeks,” Jisung had said, watching Chenle drag over a wrought iron chair to reach a branch just out of his reach.</p><p>“You can live an entire life in a few weeks, Jisung,” she’d said. Chenle, having succeeded in grabbing a peach that Jisung was absolutely sure was no different to any of the other dozens hanging off the branches around it, had turned back and held it up through the window to Jisung like a prize.</p><p>He's not sure what she'd meant, but he'd wanted to take it heart. Live his life, and try not to think about the consequences. Don't regret a thing.</p><p>“That you do,” Chenle says. He’s warm and heavy, hands braced on the armrests of the chair. “It sounds like she cares a lot about you.”</p><p>“She was the one who asked me to come back, and who suggested I take the house. She’d always wanted one of us to live here. When I said I was having trouble… there were no questions asked.” Something wells up in his throat a little at the memory of the phone call — of her utter insistence that if he wanted to, he should return home. Life wasn’t A to B, she said, which had seemed so strange for a woman who had done the same thing her entire life — who had worked her ass off to get a better life for her kids.</p><p>“Sounds like she’s a good mother,” Chenle says. He reaches up and brushes his knuckles against Jisung’s cheek, and Jisung turns his head sideways to press a kiss to them.</p><p>“She is.” The words stick in his throat. An entire life in a few weeks. He shuts his eyes for a second, then shuts his book and places it on the stack of boxes beside the chair. “Chenle,” he says.</p><p>Chenle smiles, ever iridescent. “Yeah?”</p><p>His heart pounds in his chest. “Can I kiss you?”</p><p>Chenle laughs, just a tiny puff of air, fingers still stroking rhythmically at Jisung’s cheek, thumb pressed against the corner of his mouth. “You can do more than kiss me.”</p><p>Jisung doesn't know what that means, though he can guess, and the thought of it sends trickles of hot heat dripping over his skin. He rests his hands on Chenle's waist and when he leans in tries not to let his body betray him.</p><p>He can do more, but it starts with a kiss. Softer than their first and slower, too. The sliding door is shut and the song of the crickets is muffled, and so the only sounds are their own. The slide of their lips, the rustle of their clothes. The chair creaking. Chenle’s pants as he pulls away, the tiny noise he makes in his throat when Jisung slips his hands under his shirt to sit at the small of his back.</p><p>“Your hands are so warm,” he says, shivering. Knees on either side of Jisung’s thighs, one hand spread across his chest and the other resting on his cheek. Jisung kneads his fingers into Chenle’s spine and Chenle kisses him — again. Wetter, messier. Murmuring things into his mouth, driving him mad. Kissing all over his face — his jaw, his throat, sucking at the soft skin of his neck. The mark Jisung had given him earlier blooms in dark red on his skin, and he can’t help but marvel at it, hissing as Chenle nips at his ear.</p><p>“Jisung,” he murmurs, kissing back down, pulling at the neck of his shirt. Hot, wet breath on his skin, the smack of his lips. He tugs Jisung’s shirt up and they break away for a second for Chenle to pull it off and then drop it on the floor. It hits the ground with a soft noise and Chenle stares at him — just for a moment, like he hasn’t seen Jisung without his shirt a hundred times before — eyes aflame, before going back to kissing down his chest, sliding back in the chair as he does so. Jisung cards a hand through his hair, and when Chenle’s lips are hovering over his heart he looks up at him — cheeks red, eyes dark.</p><p>“Do you want me to stop?” he asks. Palm spread across his stomach, fingers curled slightly to press at the line of his abs.</p><p>“No,” Jisung says, and he slides his hand higher, exposing the skin of Chenle’s back to the air. “Don’t.”</p><p>“Okay,” Chenle says. Voice low. Warm.</p><p>The creak of the chair. An owl hoots. Chenle's fingers graze his skin and Jisung gasps, the night falling away, Chenle the only light in this dreary world.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>There are three things that wake him in the morning.</p><p>One: a rooster's crow. Thanks to the chickens they used to keep it used to be the standard, but they were long gone and evidently someone else's birds had escaped to take up residence in the garden.</p><p>Two: a blasted mosquito whining around his ear. Jisung flattens it against the side of his head with his palm and then groans, because if one is there then there are probably more, clearly gone through the nets on the windows.</p><p>Three, and most importantly: Chenle is gone. His side of the bed is empty, and Jisung’s heart twists a little, already missing him — and then cursing that he already misses him.</p><p>Chenle's not in the kitchen, or the lounge, or really anywhere that makes sense. He's in the orchard, wicker basket hanging off his arm, singing at the top of his lungs while he stands on his wrought iron chair and picks fruit from the trees. The sun is well and truly up and he looks sketched in pastel, though the illusion is shattered when he sees Jisung and proceeds to yell "Peach!" before throwing one at him.</p><p>Jisung ducks. It hits the wall of the house and splatters slightly, juice dripping down the white brick.</p><p>"You were supposed to catch it," Chenle says, pouting slightly. “Here!”</p><p>He throws another and this time Jisung manages to catch it, stopping it a hand’s length from his face. “Can you stop throwing things at me?” he asks, before biting into it, juice bursting forth and dripping down his chin.</p><p>“I thought you might want one!” Chenle says, standing on his tippy-toes to reach one high up, and ignoring the dozen or so that are right in front of his face.</p><p>“I did,” Jisung says. He swallows the mouthful of fruity pulp he’d bitten off and starts to dig the pit out with his fingers. “Why are you on the chair again when there’s peaches within arms reach, though?”</p><p>Chenle pauses, fingers cradling a peach still attached to the branch. “Dunno,” he says, twisting it and pulling it off. “I got it in my head that the ones higher up are better. Closer to the sun, so it makes them warmer. Or tastier.” He puts it in the basket and turns to Jisung, the sun hitting the side of his face, washing him in pale gold.</p><p>“You’re an idiot,” Jisung says, plain as can be. Chenle laughs.</p><p>“Okay, but you’re stupider.” He hops off the chair, basket in hand, landing in the dry grass with an exhale. “We can agree on that, right?”</p><p>“We absolutely cannot agree on that,” Jisung says, reaching out to take the basket from him and inspect the considerable amount of fruit he’d picked. “What are we supposed to do with all these?”</p><p>“Pie? Juice? Dunno. Eat them? I’ve heard eating them is really good.”</p><p>If asked later Jisung would say he kissed Chenle to shut him up. To stop him from going on another meandering sentence, once that meant nothing and everything at once, something he wasn’t even sure of until he reached the last breath.</p><p>In truth he’d kissed him because he could, because Chenle looked so beautiful in the morning light that Jisung wanted to paint him across the back of his eyelids. He kissed him because at that moment he thinks he’d seen how fleeting everything was, and had realised that if he waited now, then maybe he’d regret it.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He can’t quite work out what’s different when Chenle touches him — only that it’s something he’d never felt before. Not a low desire, not something that simmers, but a real heat. His heart grasped inside a fist, so tight it felt like no blood could flow through the chambers, only the paradoxically thick liquid of desire. A breath snatched from his lungs at the mere scrape of his nails on his bare shoulder. His smile. Glittering, bright. Jisung's world feels like it’s been inverted, and it’s infinitely frustrating, because there it was, this feeling that wouldn't go away. This underlying want to spend time with him. To spend hours, weeks, months. Whole lifetimes that folded into little paper pieces, that fit perfectly in the grooves of his bones. Like torn up photographs, all their memories condensed into kaleidoscopic butterflies that brimmed in his cheeks, ready to burst at a moment's notice.</p><p>Of course Jisung couldn’t have that. Even as he wove a future in his mind he knew it couldn’t come to pass — that he’d have to return to reality eventually. Not just without Chenle, but back to the real world. He was living on his savings right now, but that would dry up eventually too, and then what? He was living in a temporary refuge. This bliss couldn’t exist forever. It was like a constant reminder ticking at the back of his brain — that he was running on borrowed time. Eventually he would wake up from this dream.</p><p>But until that moment he was content to live in it, to act out this domesticity in full. After the bout in the orchard and kissing each other in the sunrise light they’d gotten to cleaning, ladder set up, dusters and dustpans in hand, Chenle’s shorts always slung too low, Jisung’s always a little too high. After they finish clearing out the cobwebs that hang strung between the rafters of what was once his eldest sister's bedroom, the two of them sit down on the mattress (still coated in plastic, crinkly), coated in dust and dirt, and then burst into laughter.</p><p>"This seems ridiculous," Chenle says. "I was meant to be house-sitting, not doing your renovations."</p><p>"You don't have to," Jisung says, hasty. He had never wanted Chenle to think he was taking advantage of his kindness to fix the house, because in truth he was beginning to think he would live in squalor if it meant he could live with Chenle. "You really don't have to."</p><p>"It's fun," Chenle says. He rolls his shoulders and flops onto the plastic coating, laughing as it billows around him, air rushing out from underneath like a deflating balloon. "Isn't there something satisfying about it? I think so. Besides, you're good company."</p><p>It was a simple thing to say, but as he says it Chenle holds eye contact, and Jisung can’t resist it— the urge to kiss him that explodes within him, one that he can actually act on. He turns around and leans down to capture his lips, and Chenle’s response is ravenous. Grip digging into his biceps, pulling him down. Open mouthed, a repeat of how they’d been on the couch. The plastic crinkles and cracks underneath them and Chenle drags his body up onto the bed, tugging Jisung along with him and pulling him onto his side, tongue in his mouth, hands roaming all over him.</p><p>It ignites. It sparks all over him, a lighter to gasoline, Chenle's touch red hot. Jisung rolls onto his back and Chenle follows, a tangle of limbs and searing kisses, climbing on top of him and pinning him down.</p><p>“Fuck,” he grits out, breaking away to kiss down his jaw. “Fuck, Jisung.”</p><p>Jisung doesn’t answer. He just bites his bottom lip and tries not to whimper, every part of him <em>burning</em> with want. Want to take, to consume, to be torn apart and known so deeply in only the way a perfect stranger can have him. Chenle is a warm, a steady weight on top of him and the only noise is the press of his lips — the ragged pants of their breath, broken by a hiss as Chenle rolls them over ever so slightly. Jisung senses the hesitation and pulls him flat against him, pressing their mouths together, and Chenle follows, pressing against him, kissing him until the world slips away.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Now it’s noon and they’re sitting on the patio together, Chenle feeding him cherries. The piano tuner is hard at work behind them — plunk, plunk. Plunk, plunk — Chenle's fingers on his lips. Juice on them like blood, like it's a crime scene. Two boys in the Italian summer, reaching into rib cages and touching hearts.</p><p>“What do you think he’s doing in there?” Chenle asks, sudden, squeezing a cherry between his forefinger and thumb until it bursts. It reminds Jisung of when they dissected pig’s hearts in middle school, and how his had exploded when he’d squeezed it too hard, spraying clotted blood all over his shirt and causing his teacher to scold him. Hell, he looks about the same right now — the juice is everywhere, though it’s a little more bruised purple than bloody, closer to Chenle’s brand of watercolour kisses than actual murder.</p><p>“Fixing the piano?” Jisung raises an eyebrow. “Isn’t that what he’s supposed to do?”</p><p>“All I hear is a bunch of weird noises. I don’t know. I’ve never heard a grand piano be tuned. My parents’ house isn’t exactly big, we only had an upright one.”</p><p>“Well now you have,” Jisung says with a snort. “We got pretty used to it. You had to, you know. It was a regular occurrence. It’s still seriously weird seeing that piano just left there. I know eomma has one up in the house in Milan but… that piano is my childhood.”</p><p>Chenle shrugs. “Well, it’s yours now, isn’t it? Maybe you were meant to have it. You could learn again.”</p><p>“I don’t really want to. I have my violin. I called my parents yesterday and asked where it was, actually, and they said they’d left it here for me. Like they knew I was going to come back.”</p><p>“Your violin is here? Why aren’t we searching for it?”</p><p>“I need to give the place a full cleanout… it’ll show up eventually, right?”</p><p>In truth, he’s scared to find it. Scared he won’t be able to play as well as Chenle expects him to. Scared that he’ll pick it up and in the few months since he’s last played a violin — in the six years since he’s played <em>that</em> violin — he’ll have forgotten everything. The way it sat in his hands, how to tease the music from its strings.</p><p>He doesn’t want to disappoint Chenle.</p><p>(And, more than anything, he doesn’t want to disappoint himself. He’s already lost one love, he can’t bear to lose another. He can’t bear to lose another part of him, to leave it in London like he left so much else. He needs the music, or he thinks he’ll go mad.)</p><p>“Hmm, I suppose so,” Chenle muses. “If you’re trying to trick me into helping you clean more, it might be working. I really do want to hear you play. I feel like you make beautiful music.”</p><p>“You’re wrong,” Jisung says. “But I appreciate your confidence.”</p><p>Chenle hums, reaching out to trace the shape of Jisung’s lips with his sticky fingers. “I’m often wrong, but not about art. Not about someone like you. You’re beautiful, Jisung. Every part of you. I’m sure your music is, too.”</p><p>And there’s that moment again. Chenle stripping him bare, Chenle opening him up. This rawness with which he speaks, like he doesn’t realise his words have consequences. Like he doesn’t think before he says anything, he just speaks his mind without thought to whether it’s true or not. Only he says it with such conviction that it must be true — because Jisung doesn’t think he could lie like this. Not so openly, sunlight kissing his skin, eyes all aglow, cheekbones that Jisung can’t help but reach out to fit his fingertips against. Those beautiful rosy lips — god, if Jisung stares too long he’ll think about last night and if he thinks about last night he remembers where Chenle’s mouth had been. And if he remembers that, then — well. He’s pretty sure he’ll go mad.</p><p>Then again, when he looks at Chenle he wonders if maybe he should just succumb.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Shouldn’t you play it first?” Chenle says, already sitting on the piano stool, hands resting on the ridge of the fallboard.</p><p>“You’re probably far better than me,” Jisung says. “Consider it a gift. You play it.”</p><p>“Are you sure?” Chenle says. He pushes the fallboard back and adjusts the stool a little, looking up at Jisung. “Like, really?”</p><p>“Yes,” Jisung says, laughing. He leans down and presses a chaste kiss to Chenle’s lips. “I want to hear.”</p><p>Chenle takes a deep breath. “Okay. Lower your expectations.”</p><p>Jisung holds out a hand like an imaginary bar and then lowers it slightly, before raising it above his head, drawing a laugh from Chenle.</p><p>“I mean it,” he says. “I’m really not that good.”</p><p>He does a few scales first, fingers dancing up and down the keyboard, before glancing up at Jisung and flashing him a nervous smile.</p><p>“It’s alright,” Jisung says. “Seriously. You could play Chopsticks and I’d be impressed.”</p><p>Chenle does exactly that, laughing slightly as he plays the first few bars of it. Jisung gives him an exaggerated round of applause and in turn Chenle does a mock bow, before straightening up. “Really though,” he says. “I don’t know what to play.”</p><p>“And I’m telling you to play what you want.”</p><p>Chenle nods, taking another deep breath. “Okay. I think I remember this one.” He rests his fingers on the keys, then frowns. “Are you sure?”</p><p>“Yes,” Jisung says, giddiness bubbling up into his voice. “I promise you, Chenle. I want to hear.”</p><p>The first note is lingering. Gentle. Followed by a pattering like raindrops before Chenle presses <em>hard</em> on a key. It takes Jisung a moment to recognise the piece, though when he does he has to smile. <em>Gymnopédie</em> <em>no. 1</em>. Not technically challenging, but something that came down more to the pianist’s expression more than skill. He’d expected Chenle to go for something flashy and technical, and instead he was giving him this. Fingers slipping across the keys, face drawn into a serene concentration. The folding door is open and sunlight spills through, beautiful and golden, the music wrapping them up into a perfect moment of intimacy that seems to stretch on far longer than the three minutes the piece lasts for. Chenle looks beautiful as he plays, like he’s losing himself, the piano practically singing under his gentle touch. He carries the serenity of the piece well — the tranquility — but more than anything there’s a longing in the way he draws the music out. A little shard of his heart, broken off and exposed through the music.</p><p>It feels like floating. Like lying on his back and watching the clouds drift through the perfect blue sky, the grass tickling his arms as he stretches them out and tries to fly. It feels like an afternoon with a lover, all silent glances that say things words can’t, all hushed whispers and fingers on lips.</p><p>When Chenle finishes he lingers for a second, eyes still affixed to the keys, before he looks up at Jisung and gives a hesitant smile.</p><p>“Ta-da,” he says, rather weak.</p><p>Jisung doesn’t respond with words. How could he? The music was beautiful, but more than anything <em>Chenle</em> was beautiful, more so than he could ever possibly imagine.</p><p>He just takes the few steps to sit down beside him on the stool, cups his jaw in his hand and kisses him.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Chenle, master of getting exactly what he wants, finagles his way into having fish for dinner. They eat at a restaurant on the harbour and Chenle leans on the steel fence, eyes closed, sea breeze blowing his hair in every direction, watching all the bodies move down below them. A different live band is playing at the caffe opposite and a group of teenage girls in white sundresses and fashionable sunglasses are standing in front of them, cheering for every song and chatting excitedly between each other.</p><p>“I really have no idea what decade it is out here,” Chenle remarks, lifting his glass of wine to his mouth and taking a sip. “It feels timeless.”</p><p>“Don’t get so nostalgic,” Jisung says, laughing. “It’s not all that great. How many times have people tried to talk to you in English?”</p><p>“Literally every single time,” Chenle says, rolling his eyes. “Even people I’ve talked to before! I feel like I have to jump the gun every time to start the conversation, and even then they’ll reply in English half the time. At least in Rome there’s a chance.”</p><p>“Right, exactly. Do you even speak English?”</p><p>“No! That’s what’s even funnier about it. They’d have a better chance with French.” He swirls the wine in the bottom of his glass and takes another sip.</p><p>“You speak French?”</p><p>“Little bit,” he says, pinching his fingers together. “Enough to get around and that’s pretty much it. Enough that they hear my thick ass Italian accent and turn their nose up at me.”</p><p>“Wow,” Jisung says with a snort. “Gotta love the French.”</p><p>“They make good food. And good art. I’ll give them that. Though obviously Italy is better.”</p><p>“Who’s your favourite artist?” Jisung asks. Down in the plaza someone is playing a trumpet unusually loud, and over the top of it a woman is laughing.</p><p>“Oh,” Chenle says, resting his chin on his hand. “I do like Bernini.”</p><p>“The sculptor?”</p><p>Chenle nods. “I used to go to Galleria Borghese all the time when I was in University. Free entry for Fine Arts students, you know. I couldn’t believe how he made marble look like skin. And the details on <em>Apollo and Daphne…</em> the leaves that look paper thin, like they might blow away in the wind.” He sighs, a dreamy expression crossing his face. “It’s incredible how someone can create something so beautiful from a medium we think is as lifeless as stone, isn’t it?”</p><p>“Sure,” Jisung says. Chenle looks beautiful like this — painted in warm lights of the caffe, face alight with passion, a million fireflies reflected in his eyes. “But aren’t you a painter?”</p><p>“Sure, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate other forms of art, right?”</p><p>“Okay, who’s your favourite painter, then?”</p><p>“Oh, you’re going to hate me for this one,” Chenle says. He picks up the wine bottle and tops off his glass, smiling to himself.</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“It’s Monet.”</p><p>“Traitor,” Jisung says, laughing. “He’s French!”</p><p>“I know, I know, I’m sorry! And I know it’s a cliche answer and you can tell me we had the Macchiaioli but you know they’re not the same. Monet was the greatest for a reason.”</p><p>“I can’t believe you! I didn’t peg you for an impressionist fan, either.”</p><p>“I draw influence from everywhere,” Chenle says with a pout. “But impressionism is one of my favourite styles, yeah.”</p><p>“You know he stayed around here for a while,” Jisung says. “Monet did. Just up the coast in Bordighera.”</p><p>“I know. My aunt took me there for a few days before I came here. He always said how he found the Meditteranean impossibly blue, and I understand that sentiment now. I just sat there with my paint for a good full day trying to work out how to capture it and gave up on accuracy. I can only hope to create something vaguely faithful.”</p><p>“Oh, so you’ve been?”</p><p>“For a bit, yeah. I’m not kidding when I say it Jisung, everything about Liguria is beautiful. I can’t believe you ever left.”</p><p>“I… I thought it’s what I had to do.”</p><p>“Sorry,” Chenle says, perhaps sensing the hesitation in his voice, reaching out across the table to rest his hand on top of Jisung’s. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just incredible here. I want to paint it all, but I worry if I try I’ll never do it justice. Like you, I suppose. You feel impossible, too. I feel like I’m not even doing any work because you’re so beautiful you just come onto the canvas like—” he makes a vague gesture that Jisung takes to indicate some quality he’d deny he actually possessed. “Like all of this.”</p><p>“Don’t say that,” Jisung says. “You don’t know me. Not really.”</p><p>“I want to, though,” Chenle says. He brushes his thumb over the back of Jisung’s knuckles. “I want to know every part of you.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Jisung hits Chenle’s bed back of his calves first, walking backwards into the mattress, everything else coming afterward as he tumbles into the sheets. He’d already shed his shirt in the doorway — Chenle had pulled it over his head just before pushing him up against the wall — and before Chenle follows him down he pulls his own off, discarding it somewhere in the mess of his room and unbuttoning his shorts to drop them on the carpet.</p><p>“Turn the light on,” Jisung says, his heart hammering in his throat. It’s past ten and the moon is waning, the sky streaked with silvery clouds, the room painted in an inky blue gloom. Not the way he wants to see Chenle, but maybe the way he’d like to be seen.</p><p>It doesn’t matter. This isn’t about him. Chenle reaches over and turns on the lamp, hesitant, warm golden glow blooming through the night air.</p><p>He’s gorgeous. As always. Ridges and hollows, all his muscles shifting under his skin, all his bones that stand out like landmarks, the lines of his veins on his wrists, a single one that dips into his waistband that Jisung wants to touch. Every part of him is so utterly alive, and just watching him move is like seeing a dream come to life. There’s flecks of blue all over his biceps — efforts to capture that impossible grace of the sea — a single speck of green on his navel. White and black on his palms, errant drops of gold dried into his sparse leg hair. He climbs onto the bed and hovers above Jisung, meeting his eyes as he murmurs to ask if this is okay.</p><p>“Yeah,” Jisung says. “I want to see you.”</p><p>Here the lamp is behind him and everything is painted in strange lines of shadow, Chenle’s eyes glinting as he leans down to capture his mouth again. The ensuing kiss is slow and languid, and Jisung melts into it, allowing the softest noise to escape from him, threading his hand in Chenle’s hair and guiding him into the kiss. He presses the tiniest pecks to Chenle’s bottom lip and Chenle’s breath hitches, a stuttered gasp that deepens as Jisung swipes his tongue against the seam of his lips, dragging his teeth ever so slightly against his upper lip until Chenle lets him in.</p><p>It’s still slow. Jisung knows, among all other things, that he’s an exceptionally good kisser, and Chenle has an exceptionally good mouth, and at least he knows he can rely on that. He thinks he’ll never get tired of Chenle’s lips — how plush they feel beneath his, how sensitive he seems to be. Their kisses are wet and loud and Chenle keeps whimpering — tiny little noises like kitten mewls, like he’s holding himself back. If he’s trying he’s not doing very well — Jisung can still feel it, a mirror of his yearning running between them like a livewire, sparkling all through his veins. He runs his hand down Chenle’s back and maps out the knobs of his spine, and Chenle presses against him, again, deepening the kiss, everything turning wet and messy as Jisung’s hand slips down to rest on the small of his back.</p><p>“You’re so desperate,” Jisung says, finding it in himself to chuckle as Chenle presses kisses all over his jaw. “What’s gotten into you?”</p><p>“<em>You</em>,” Chenle hisses, and it arcs through him, scattering all over his skin like a cut cable dragging the ground, sparks flowing through the air, bursting with the wet kisses Chenle presses across his neck. “Do you know how maddeningly beautiful you are?”</p><p>And that’s something. That’s new and that’s scary, that’s raw desire — that’s Chenle not holding back. Jisung curses and tips his head back, allowing Chenle better access, and Chenle bites, sucking at his skin, his fingers dancing up and down Jisung’s sides.</p><p>Chenle is golden. That’s the only way Jisung can describe him, the only thing that comes to his mind over and over. Golden and molten, dripping all over him, every kiss like a pyroclasm, lava rolling across the earth. It’s like being reborn and Jisung sinks into it, not holding back. He shouldn’t be shy. He’s done this all before, and yet with Chenle it’s so hard not to <em>cower</em>, because when Chenle looks at him it’s like staring straight at the sun. Brilliant and warm, his touch effervescent, marking him forever. Painting him, in one way or another, like —</p><p>“You should paint me. Paint on me,” Jisung says, just as Chenle presses a hand over his beating heart. “Put your handprints on me.”</p><p>“Oh?” Chenle asks, and his eyes gleam, capturing the light like twin candle flames. “With my fingers?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Jisung says, heat creeping up his cheeks. If he didn’t want Chenle as bad as he did, then maybe he’d feel more than a lick of shame, but as it is, he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care at all. He’s wanted this since Chenle climbed out of the pond, water running in rivulets down his body, all his thin muscles caught in the glint of the sun, all that gorgeous tan skin, that wicked smile. All the boys he’d been with in that very spot paled in comparison, and he’d never known want until he’d met Chenle.</p><p>“I can do that,” Chenle murmurs. “Yeah. I can do that.”</p><p>They go back to kissing. Body against body, Jisung’s hands smoothing up and down Chenle’s back. Exploring ever so slightly, until —</p><p>“Holy shit,” Jisung says, just as Chenle shudders under his touch. Was that him? Did he do that? “Chenle, holy shit.”</p><p>“You don’t get it, do you?” Chenle repeats, pulling away from kissing his collarbone to stare him in the eyes. “You really don’t get it.” Stuttering, shaking, his words coming breathless.“I want you so badly it terrifies me. You’re all I can think about. Day and night, every waking second. I feel like I’m going mad with it all.”</p><p>Being the subject of that much desire is terrifying — to want someone so much and see it reflect in them. To see the fire in their eyes, the way their entire being arches towards you. Feeling the heat of his skin, like metal left in the midsummer heat, so hot it would burn otherwise, yet somehow Jisung is immune.</p><p>Chenle’s knees wobble and he falls on top of Jisung, arms braced on either side of his head.</p><p>“It’s okay,” Jisung says. “It’s okay. I’m here.”</p><p>It’s beautiful. Having Chenle like this. Seeing the way he looks with his eyes closed, his bottom lip caught between his teeth, breath stuttering. He plants kisses all over the side of his face, drawing his hands down the sheets, rucking them up and gasping, falling apart in a way Jisung can only describe as artful — like a slow motion explosion, like stained glass flying through the air, a million iridescent shards that glitter along the edge of every whimper.</p><p>Except they never cut. They just fuel Jisung’s greed, and he wants more and more. When it becomes just skin on skin, Chenle flips them over, so it’s Jisung covering his body — so he’s staring up at him with obsidian black eyes, his kisses hot and desperate.</p><p>“It’s okay,” Jisung repeats. He pulls back and Chenle stares at him through lidded eyes, dark hair a halo on the pale mattress, lips kiss bitten and cherry red. Like a painting, a saint, except he’s real, and he’s alive and Jisung is in his bed, and it’s better than he could have ever imagined.</p><p>“I know,” Chenle says. He swallows, his throat bobbing. “Kiss me.”</p><p>He listens. He kisses him. He brings him into his lap and kisses him, until Jisung can’t take it anymore, until he whispers something into Chenle’s ear and bites his lip as he pulls back, waiting for his response.</p><p>“Are you sure?” Chenle asks, and Jisung nods, hair stuck to his forehead.</p><p>“I want you,” he says. “Since the day we met.”</p><p>Chenle is shaking — Jisung can feel it. He has one hand on his cheek and the other braced against the mattress, and he shivers into the kiss, desperate as it is. It’s so hard to focus on what Chenle’s doing — where his hands are, how he’s touching him — when his face is right there. When he still can’t believe that he’s here with him.</p><p>“Me too,” Chenle says. “I looked at you and it was like — like colour came back into the world. Or I hadn’t been seeing it properly before.”</p><p>“Chenle,” Jisung says, his name feeling bloodied on his tongue. It’s terrifying. He doesn’t deserve that. He isn’t like that. He’s just a lost boy who’s come back home — like a migratory bird, lost in the wind, going back to the only place he’s ever really known. “Chenle. Please.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>Jisung’s arms around his neck, sitting in Chenle’s lap. Chenle’s hand on the small of his back, stabilising him. Helping him.</p><p>“You’re so good,” Chenle says. A murmur against his mouth. “Jisung, do you know how beautiful you are? You’re so beautiful. I could paint you a thousand times and it’d still never hold a candle to you.”</p><p>Jisung would push away if he could. He shouldn’t feel like this. He shouldn’t be so ready to give himself away — not to this extent. It’s never been like this before — the way everything feels like a supernova inside of him, the kind of thing people write songs about. The kind of thing people dance for, paint for, where your words fail you and you have to do something else, because how else can he ever show just what Chenle is? How else can he express it?</p><p>“So good,” Chenle murmurs, and he’s scorching. He’s burning. A fragment of the sun, glowing beneath his ribs. Heartbeat crashing, his lips on Jisung’s. Everything falling apart. It all falls apart. Gold dust on his fingertips, still molten where he breathes into Chenle’s mouth.</p><p>There’s no place he’d rather be. Nowhere else he wants to go, and it’s like sinking into hot water, closing his eyes and letting the white light swallow him up, tasting every colour on his tongue when he falls apart in Chenle’s arms.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It all feels like a haze. When he wakes up in the morning he finds Chenle staring at him with his eyes barely open, their bodies still pressed together. It’s so easy to roll over until he’s on top of him — hands braced on either side of his head, hair falling across his face as he kisses him, languid and slow, thick, like they’re swimming through caramelised sugar. Outside the window the dawn breaks through, crepuscular rays of precious metal as the sun kisses the hilltops, drifting through the bottom of the curtains and turning everything a gloomy grey. The sheets are warm and the bed smells like the both of them, and as they lose themselves in each other, Chenle’s hands drifting down his back, he tells Jisung he never wants this to end. To live in this moment — in their tiny bubble — forever and ever.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Chenle kicks him in the leg. Jisung is lying face down on his pillow and he grunts, limbs like jelly.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“We should get up.”</p><p>Jisung turns his head to the side, taking in the sight of Chenle in the same position as him — on his stomach, head turned to the side, soft smile on his face. He reaches over to brush away a strand of Jisung’s fringe from his eyes and Jisung angles his face into it, like a cat chasing a pat.</p><p>“Don’t want to,” Jisung says.</p><p>“C’mon. We should do something. Eat, at least.”</p><p>“I just want to kiss you,” Jisung says, mumbling slightly.</p><p>“That’s all?” Chenle cocks an eyebrow. “Am I that bad?”</p><p>“Shut up,” Jisung says, flopping an arm in his general direction. “You’re amazing. I just. Twice in one morning?”</p><p>Chenle purses his lips, face knit into concentration before he relaxes and nods. “You don’t need to do anything.” His fingers dance down Jisung’s back, pushing lightly at him until Jisung gets the hint and rolls onto his side. Chenle’s eyes burn into him and he drops down the mattress, ducking his head under the sheets and humming a familiar tune.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. permanence</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jisung makes breakfast by himself. After a fruitless search of Chenle’s bombsite of a room yielded no clue as to the location of where his shirt had ended up, he’d ended up wearing one of Chenle’s, along with a pair of his briefs.</p><p>(No clue for Chenle as to the location. After they were done in bed Chenle had gotten up to brush his teeth, making it easy enough for Jisung to stuff his shirt under the mattress and play stupid.)</p><p>It’s nice. Nice to wear something that belongs to Chenle, to feel possessed by him in one way or another. Even though he’s not here — he’s up in his studio, another burst of inspiration no doubt — he still feels his touch.</p><p>He feels him everywhere. Lingering. If Jisung had had his way he would have lay in bed all day long, kissing him and touching him, but in the end he acquiesces, recognising there are things to do. He has to go pick up the juice from Eleanora, he has to eat breakfast — he has to <em>shower</em>.</p><p>Food first though. Coffee first, the true Italian way. He brings up a cup for Chenle and sets it on his desk beside him, and Chenle looks up at him with a grin, earning a kiss on the lips and almost earning him an unfortunate blue highlight in his hair as Chenle seems to forget he’s holding his brush.</p><p>“What’re you painting?” Jisung asks, dragging a stool over and sitting down beside him. It’s an almost dreamy seascape — endless turquoise, terracotta roofs breaking the bottom part of the canvas, an olive branch curling through the foreground. He can practically feel the dry heat on the canvas, the hot summer wind, and the drone of the insects.</p><p>“Bordighera,” Chenle says, humming. “When you mentioned it last night I wanted to revisit it. But it’s like—” he holds up his palette “—it really is impossible. What shade of blue even was it? Every time I stare at the sea I try to memorise it, but it truly feels impossible. Which reminds me. Can I come paint at your house? Just for a bit. I…” he pauses, almost bashful when he comes back to say: “I wanted to turn that sketch of you in the orchard into a painting. And the beach. Your house is beautiful, Jisung.”</p><p>“Of course you can. But you know you don’t have to work the entire time you’re here, right?” Jisung says, reaching out to lay a hand on his shoulder. Chenle shrugs, giving him a smile — one that he finds is a little less bright than before. More of a sunset than a sunrise, tinged with the regret of someone that knows they must disappear so time can flow forward.</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“You’re on holiday.”</p><p>“I’m house sitting.”</p><p>“You’re in Cinque Terre in July. You’re on holiday. You don’t have to draw the entire time you’re here.”</p><p>“Again, I know. It’s just — I want to paint. I want to do it so badly. I feel so full of it it’s like I’m going to burst if I don’t put it on the canvas. When I was in Rome it was like… well, part of the reason I came here was because I was hoping if I unclenched then maybe I’d be able to produce something that isn’t shit for once. I haven’t had an exhibition in months and my agent has been fucking sitting on my ass, like it’s somehow my fault my muse had decided to go drown itself in the sea. And then I met you and it was like.” He looks away, out towards the window — to where a group of gulls sit on the sunbaked terracotta roof of the house opposite. “It was like it all came back. Like I was born to paint you. Sorry if that’s too forward just — you are <em>so</em> incredible, Jisung.”</p><p>“I’m really not,” Jisung says, feeling it tie up inside of him. “I don’t understand why you say I am.” It’s a lump in his throat — a roadblock he keeps running into. The question of why — why him? Chenle is an artist. An artist with an exhibition waiting for him in Rome — a whole other life. He’s a brilliant shard of the heavens, meant for something so much better than this directionless boy from the mud of the Earth. He doesn’t need Jisung.</p><p>Chenle frowns. He places his paintbrush down and turns to face Jisung, swivelling in his seat.</p><p>“I don’t get why you keep saying that,” Chenle says. “I really don’t. Look—” he reaches over, stretching out to grab his sketchbook then flipping it open. It’s another drawing of Jisung — still a rough sketch, but a lot more realistic. He flips back a few pages past rough outlines of the architecture in the plaza to another picture — Jisung sitting on the floor adding chilli paste to the cabbage. All lines, always all lines, rough, blurring him out almost, like he was a reflection in the water. “You make the most simple things into art. Who needs anything else when you’re here?”</p><p>He flips back again. It’s the drawing of him in the orchard again, reaching to the skies, only Chenle has added colour — watercolours that run all over the page and mingle with each other, soaking through the pencil lines like raindrops down a window. “I like this one,” Chenle continues. “I like all of you, really. But you look like you’re about to fly here. Like you’re free.”</p><p>They make eye contact again. A crackle of lightning, Chenle’s eyes are dark, and his entire face is open like shutters on a hot summer’s day. Jisung can see everything, only he doesn’t understand what Chenle is trying to tell him. What he’s supposed to be looking at, only the strange feelings that swirl within him. It’s like the flickering flames he’d seen in his eyes last night, the heart of a volcano captured within.</p><p>“You’re the artist,” Jisung says. Chenle tilts his head to the side, blinking slowly, gaze catlike.</p><p>“What’s that supposed to mean?”</p><p>“It just means you know things.”</p><p>Chenle regards him for a second more, then sighs. “Yeah. I guess so.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Jisung’s not really sure what it means, and so he puts it to the back of his mind. He pushes the thought away, locking it in a draw in his chest, the same one that contains the swirling miasma of anxiety that appears every time he thinks about what he’s going to do with his life. Thinking of the future never does him well, anyway. The bitterness becomes all he can taste — all his past failures coming back to haunt him. Every time he’d had a hope for the future, life had seen it fit to strike him down. Chenle, like dance, was a brilliant star. Filling everything with light until he reached the brink of collapse, folding in on himself with a bang, leaving nothing but ash behind.</p><p>There’s a lot better things to focus on. Like the sparkles in his chest — champagne bubbles, the warmth of having someone he wants so very much surrender to him. The entire night keeps playing back in his mind, and he has to hold back from pinching himself over and over, because it all feels like a dream. Especially through the haze of the brutal high noon sun — the way everything turns bleached and white as he walks through the back alleys, birdsong and echoes of chatter surrounding him. Pink and red blooms spill from the flower boxes, and all along the way he sees familiar faces — people he’s known since he could barely walk, who probably leant into his pram and cooed at him when he was just a child.</p><p>How times change.</p><p>This time Eleanora won’t let him go without a conversation. They sit out on the balcony together and share coffee and biscuits, looking over a wide set of steps bordered by a garden of succulents and jasmine. Two children are playing at the base of the steps and occasionally their conversation stilts when one of them screams — though it picks back up immediately, Eleanora waving her hand dismissively as she launches into another story about one of her guests.</p><p>In the six years between when he’d last seen here she’d gotten married to a boy named Luca, from La Spezia, and the two of them had bought all four floors of the building and turned it into a guesthouse. It was busy, apparently — they were fully booked from June straight through to September, and she’d said that they’d already booked up most of the next year, too.</p><p>“I’ve never seen anything like it,” she says, adjusting her shades then reaching for a biscuit. “It’s swarming out here. Even more than it was when we were kids. Now we get the August crowds in July and the July crowds in June. It’s good though, keeps us in business.”</p><p>“What do you do? Just have people stay with you?”</p><p>“Pretty much,” she says. “It’s busy, but you get to meet lots of people. Luca does the cooking and I do the front desk sort of stuff, mostly — keep it all running. Tell them to fuck off if they’re being too rude.” She laughs. “Standard stuff, you know. Sometimes I’ll be a tour guide, show them the best spots. Sometimes we’ll all go out for dinner together, or I’ll go with some of the guests to the swimming hole in the harbour. Whatever works, really. The whole building is ours. At the most we’ll have twenty or so people staying with us.”</p><p>“And that’s your job?”</p><p>“That’s my job,” she says. A gull lands on the balcony, eyeing their biscuits, and she shoos it off. “It’s hard work, but it’s worth it. What do you do, anyway?”</p><p>It takes a lot of twists and turns, but he manages to extract himself from the conversation and — after a lengthy goodbye and multiple cheek kisses — he’s left standing in the alley again with two bottles of peach juice in his backpack.</p><p>The biscuits do little to satisfy his hunger, and he drops by a caffe in the shade of a lemon tree to have a full lunch — <em>pansotti</em>, anchovies and <em>farinata</em>. He eyes up the octopus salad but decides to save it for later — Chenle hadn’t tried it, and he knows at least he’ll be able to steal his over dinner if it came to it. After purchasing more milk and a focaccia so fresh he has to stop himself from eating it then and there, he climbs back up the hill and drops off his food at Chenle’s place, by which time his shirt is stuck to his back, sweat coating his skin.</p><p>At least the heat is fairly dry. At least it evaporates quickly. He flops down, face down, on the couch in Chenle’s studio and lets out a loud groan.</p><p>“What’s happening?” Chenle says, though he doesn’t look at him. He’s going through a box of well squeezed tubes, fingers dancing as he rifles through them.</p><p>“It’s too hot,” Jisung says, by way of explanation.</p><p>“Errands canceled?”</p><p>“I was going to climb the hill to the lookout but the idea of going up the cliff face in this heat sounds like pure misery. Errands are done. The juice is in the fridge and I got some milk and bread. What are you doing?”</p><p>“I,” Chenle says, apparently finally deciding the colour he wants, “am going to paint. With this.” He wiggles the tube of paint at Jisung — the band around the middle indicating it to be a rather deep green. “What’re you doing?”</p><p>“Watching you?” Jisung offers. He yawns. Chenle is shirtless, sitting only in his faded red shorts, surrounded by the madness and mess piled up on the desk, his sketchbook on his right and a thick sheet of glass smeared with every colour of the rainbow on his left.</p><p>“You can’t stay here,” Chenle says. It stings, but Chenle quickly follows it up with: “Well, you can. But I don’t want you to. I’m using oils and it’s about to stink like hell. I don’t want you to get sick.”</p><p>“Oils?” Jisung asks. “What, like essential oils?”</p><p>“Oil paints,” Chenle says with a snicker. He holds up a bottle and shakes it. “Need to thin them out. It smells terrible and is probably going to kill all my brain cells at the age of fifty, but it’s all in the name of art, right?”</p><p>“Oh.”</p><p>He’s making him leave. Jisung gets it, on a level — it’s for his safety — but it sucks. He wants to spend time with Chenle. He wants to watch him work, not get kicked out so he can paint. It’s an unwelcome reminder that while all Jisung has is Chenle, Chenle has so much more than Jisung. He has his art, an agent, an exhibition, a career, a whole future in Rome that Jisung — this hopelessly lost boy from the countryside — doesn’t have a place in.</p><p>Jisung swallows, feeling it stick in his throat, and nods. “Yeah, okay,” Jisung says. “That’s fair. Come down when you’re done, then? I’ll just read.”</p><p>“Of course,” Chenle says. He gives him a bright smile. “Enjoy your book. Come get me if you need anything?”</p><p>Jisung rolls off the couch and makes to leave, though he stops in the doorway, one hand on the frame, and turns around, taking a pause for a second.</p><p><em>He’s still painting me</em>, Jisung thinks, a possessive streak cutting through him like a flash of lightning. <em>I’m</em> <em>still his muse.</em></p><p>He walks back across the room to wrap his arms around Chenle and press a kiss to the crown of his head. “I will,” he murmurs, glancing at the colours Chenle has laid out. It’s almost all greens and browns, one tube of ochre yellow and another of a slate blue.</p><p>Shades of the earth.</p><p>Chenle’s hand comes out to twine with his and squeeze it. He looks back over his shoulder at Jisung and Jisung presses another kiss to his lips, tasting the smile — tasting the summer heat. Tasting a strange promise.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He ends up reading in the lounge, stretched out on the recliner, absorbing the sunshine. At some point he gets up and pulls a tub of pesto from the fridge, smearing across a few slices of the focaccia and swallowing it whole. He pours himself a glass of wine and stares across at the rooftop garden opposite, trying to name all the flowers and giving up almost immediately, because he used to know them like the back of his hand but now they’re all reds and whites and nothing else, a tricolour like the flag hanging limp in the plaza, no wind to stir it today.</p><p>It’s muggy and humid and he’s restless — insatiable. He’s alone in the room of a house that isn’t his and he feels like he’s running in circles, a dog chasing its tail, a water wheel ever turning.</p><p>What’s he supposed to be doing, anyway? In the alleyway below he watches a couple of tourists talk, jabbing and pointing to the foldout map in their hands, and he thinks of Eleanora. He wonders if they were staying with her. Unlikely considering how much of the village became accommodation in the summer, but still…</p><p>There’s a thought he can’t manifest — blurred as if he’s staring up at it from underwater. Peering through the haze, trying to make sense of it but ultimately failing, the heat too strong.</p><p>It gets to him. Relentless, inescapable. He’s not even sure if having the windows open helps — it just seems to let more of it in. He takes his book with him to bed and turns the fan on, though no matter how he tries his eyes start to droop. No matter how he tries he can’t help but feel sluggish and fatigued, like he’s running on empty, like everything has been sapped from his limbs.</p><p>He puts his book face down on the mattress and tugs a pillow down. It smells like Chenle — everything smells like Chenle. This was his room — his place. This was where this morning only they’d —</p><p>Jisung stops himself, curling his hands into loose fists and tucking them against his chest. Everything catches up with him and he shuts his eyes and lets the afternoon swallow him up, Chenle’s body still imprinted beneath his fingers.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It’s near sunset when he wakes up, groggy and disoriented, thinking for a second that he’s back in London before he hears the sound of the waves coming through the window. The normally rosewood shaded walls of the room are painted peach in the setting sun, and the sheets are warm beneath him. His book is still where he left it, and he stares at it for a while, not quite shaking off the shackles of sleep for the time being.</p><p>It’s nice to exist like this for a while — free of everything, caught between worlds, like the edges of his being might shimmer if someone looked at him. His thoughts are weightless and he drifts in and out of sleep, until he eventually rolls over and splays his arms out, yawning and stretching like an oversized cat.</p><p>The house is silent. Chenle must still be in his studio, then. He supposes he can pick up from where he left off in his book — the heroine of the story about to be swept up in someone’s arms no doubt. Who would she choose? Her best friend — at her side since she was young, always on hand — or the cool princess.</p><p>In honesty, Jisung doesn’t remember much about the story. It feels most of the time he’s been reading it he’s been in a high summer haze, and when he picks up the page the words swim in front of his eyes for a second, before he remembers where he’d been.</p><p>He doesn’t get far. There’s a soft knock on the door and he looks up to see Chenle, paint smeared up his arms and flecked across his bare chest, holding a rag in his hands. There’s a faint scent of chemicals in the air and he’s smiling, an expression so gentle it punches the air from Jisung’s lungs.</p><p>“Hey,” Chenle says. “Did you sleep?”</p><p>“Yeah.” It comes out breathless. “Just a nap.”</p><p>He’s still smiling. Like dawn light, like a warm embrace of a friend. Washing over Jisung. He doesn’t get it, but he takes it anyway, staring at the sunset captured in his eyes and slight blush in his cheeks.</p><p>“Good?” Chenle asks.</p><p>“Good enough.”</p><p>He scrunches the rag up, twisting it around his hand slowly, seemingly frozen in the doorframe. “Yeah. You look good.”</p><p>“How was the painting?”</p><p>“It was okay. I — well. We’ll see. But I think it was good.” His eyes follow the line of Jisung’s body and he lets the rag drop back down. It’s dirty and smeared with paint — he must have used it to clean the brushes.</p><p>“That’s good to hear. Are you painting the same thing?” He remembers hearing Monet had done something similar.</p><p>“Yeah,” Chenle says. “Trying to get it right. I, unfortunately, am cursed with perfectionism.”</p><p>“I’m sure whatever you do will be perfect,” Jisung says. Chenle’s still looking at him like that — an incredible fondness that leaks from him, eyes never leaving Jisung. “You’re really good.”</p><p>“You’ve barely seen anything from me, you can’t say that. And anyway. I think I might exhibit this one. I want to make it good.”</p><p>“What is it?”</p><p>“Just something I sketched while I was here.”</p><p>“Oh. Maybe you could make it a whole series? A summer in Liguria,” Jisung says. That’s what artists did, right? Make a series of the things they found pretty. Monet had his water lilies, or his Japanese footbridge. Maybe Chenle would have Liguria — the Cinque Terre and Bordighera.</p><p>A permanent reminder of their time together, though he doesn’t know if he wants that shared. The earth they walked together, the waves they dipped their toes in. The orchard and the house, the sunshine, the hot earth. The olive groves and the blackberries, the trickle of the river. All the brightly coloured paint, the hillside villages that made Cinque Terre so famous.</p><p>He supposes it’s not his to keep.</p><p>“In all honesty, it seems selfish of me, but I want to keep it for myself,” Chenle says. His eyes sweep over Jisung’s body again, and somehow — though Jisung didn’t think it possible — his smile gets softer. “It’s like this is special, and if I paint it down I might not even keep the magic. Or someone might steal it. But yeah, I want to share a few pieces. These ones… I feel like they’re going to be good, and at least I can let my agent know I’m not wasting my summer away.”</p><p>Wasting it? The thought makes Jisung frown for a second, though he stitches back up, Chenle thankfully preoccupied with his body again. “You want to share paintings of me?”</p><p>Chenle nods. “Yeah.”</p><p>“If you want…” Jisung says. He bites his lip. “Do you want to do portraits of me, or…?” He trails off, unsure what it even might entail.</p><p>“Uh,” Chenle says, and he stutters — honestly and truly stutters, an emotion that looks so foreign compared to his normal confidence. A shyness, ducking his head away. “I was actually… God, I wish you could see how beautiful you look right now.” He wrings his hands for a second, shifting in the door frame before he makes eye contact with him and smiles again. “You don’t have to say yes, but I was wondering if I could paint you.” He swallows. “Umm. I was wondering if I could paint you nude.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“What do you want me to do?” Jisung asks, hesitant. It hadn’t been what he’d expected Chenle to ask but now — lying on the bed he’d shared with Chenle last night, naked as the day he was born — he feels okay.</p><p>He’s unsure how this works, still. Does he just sit here? Pose? Flex? He doesn’t know how nude modelling works, all his ideas of it completely without reference. Chenle has probably done this dozens of times in art school, but for Jisung it’s brand new.</p><p>He’s never been particularly confident in his body — just okay with it. Objectively he knows he’s in good shape, but it doesn’t mean it’s easy for him to be like this. To feel so open and vulnerable, even in front of someone who has already had him in so many ways. And for it to be immortalised — that’s something else. Chenle is painting him, setting up his palette, squeezing out enough yellow to paint a field of sunflowers, the chemical smell getting stronger as he mixes it around.</p><p>“Just lie however is comfortable. I already told you, you look like art doing anything.”</p><p>“You’re the one who wants to paint me.”</p><p>“And you’re the model. I’ll tell you if it isn’t okay.”</p><p>“Okay,” Jisung says. Hesitant. He rolls onto his side, propping his head up on his elbow and tucking his legs up slightly. “Like this?”</p><p>Chenle purses his lips and goes to sit down against the wall. He picks up his seat and moves it slightly to the right, then smiles. “That’s perfect. Don’t move. Let me just…” He gets up again and tugs the sheets over Jisung’s legs, covering up his calves and half his thigh, letting it drape down slightly like mist rolling over the sea. “There. Is that okay?”</p><p>Jisung nods. His heart beats heavy in his chest, but he’s not scared. Chenle smiles at him, stopping to touch his cheek for a second. He reaches up and brushes his hair from his eyes in a gesture that’s so unbearably tender that it, despite the warm air of the room, causes Jisung to break out in goosebumps.</p><p>“Careful,” Chenle says, a smile tugging at the edges of his lips. “Just tell me if you want me to stop, okay? At any time.”</p><p>“Of course.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The low evening sun paints everything in a golden drip, warm and precious, melting all over Jisung’s bare skin like sweet honey where he lies in the sheets. At first it had been nerve wracking, his heart pounding, but as Chenle had started to work he’d relaxed. He’d leaned into it, letting the tranquility of the moment take him over, focusing on the noises filtering in from the open window — music and chatter and laughter, dogs barking and gulls crying, the ever present crash of the waves.</p><p>He’s relaxed and warm, but he can’t help but look up — and when he does he catches Chenle's eyes on him, tracing the line of his body, brush poised and ready. It sends a fistful of butterflies fluttering through his stomach, bright colours that hiccup past his lips, blooming in the air as Chenle reaches for a crumpled tube of paint and squeezes it out.</p><p>Jisung knows he shouldn’t be nervous. After last night it shouldn’t even matter, but Jisung knows this is different. For Chenle to paint him, to flay him bare like this and place him on the paper forever — a permanent mark, not just a murky memory — it's something else. Stripped open, laid bare. Dusty sunlight on his skin, the gentle dab of the paint on the paper. Chenle works in relative silence, his fire reigned in, concentration knit at his brow.</p><p>"You're…" he mumbles, and Jisung pauses, finger poised to turn the corner of the page of his book. He waits for the end of the sentence, but it seems to never come — Chenle just goes back to his paints, the thought left drifting half finished through the air.</p><p>The world blurs on. Sunlight fading, the revelry of the night coming through the open windows. Gold turns to orange, melting all over them, sunset kisses and molten amber, Chenle himself looking like a painting where he sits against the wall, surrounded by the mess of his room. Still the sounds of him working, his humming, the occasional sound of him squeezing out more paint. The way he falls into his own world, a trance taking him over. Sometimes Jisung will look up and he’ll see Chenle staring at him, and this time when they make eye contact neither of them will break it. It’ll linger — electrified, like the two of them are magnets.</p><p>“Almost done,” Chenle says. He takes up a swirl of a light gold and sticks his tongue out, letting out a sigh. “You’re doing good. You can relax if you want.”</p><p>“Like put my head down?”</p><p>“If you want. I know it’s not comfortable holding a pose for that long.”</p><p>Jisung’s arm aches when he lets his head flop down — though he tries not to shift too much, aware of the fact Chenle still has to finish painting him.</p><p>"Is that okay?" Jisung asks.</p><p>"It's fine," Chenle says. "I'm really just doing touch ups. Though, fuck, I could paint you like this, too."</p><p>"I want to eat first," Jisung says.</p><p>"Me too, don't worry. Food still beats everything. As soon as I'm done we can get out of here. You know they have a Thursday special at the bar down the other end of the main road? We should go there."</p><p>"There's been a Thursday special there since my oldest sister was born. Yeah, we're going.'</p><p>"Well, that's something to look forward to, then. I missed it last week."</p><p>"Why?"</p><p>There's no answer for some time. Chenle swaps his brush out for a much finer one as he concentrates on a single spot, only answering as he goes to mix more paint together.</p><p>"Just didn't feel like it."</p><p>"That's it?"</p><p>"Yeah. I'd been painting in the valley all day long. I was tired and going to a noisy bar was pretty much dead last on my list of priorities." He sighs, swirling his paintbrush around before going back to the paper. "I don't really like crowds. Even if it gets me food."</p><p>"Ah, I get you," Jisung says. "It's alright. Me too."</p><p>“My mama always said I was a people person. But I think I’m more of a <em>some</em> people person.”</p><p>“And I’m…?” Jisung trails off, not wanting to push it too far.</p><p>“Part of a very special list,” Chenle finishes. “Part of some people.” He swaps brushes and touches lightly at his palette. “<em>The</em> person, maybe,” he says, and it’s so soft Jisung almost doesn’t catch it.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The painting is beautiful. Chenle tells him it’s not finished — he’ll come back to it later, surely — but he finds it hard to believe when it looks so stunning. It’s strange seeing himself like this — laid bare, sheet offering a modicum of modesty, the sun almost swallowing him whole with its golden glow.</p><p>“Is it okay?” Chenle asks, and he’s fidgeting again, stinking like turpentines from cleaning his brushes, scraping the leftover paint from his pallet into a tiny collection of containers flecked with already dried colours. “I tried to do what I normally do but, you know, you’re just. I’m not sure if it’s right.”</p><p>“Are you going to exhibit this?” Jisung asks, because it’s beautiful. He can’t believe it’s him. His face is slightly smudged but recognisable amongst the still wet paint, and there’s long shadows cast across his body, the tranquility of the moment almost humming through the paper. There’s an intimacy to it that again makes something stick in Jisung’s chest, because he doesn’t look like this. He doesn’t deserve to be looked at like this — and he feels a momentary burst of panic in the back of his throat at the idea this might be hung up on a wall.</p><p>Would Chenle even want to invite him to his exhibition all the way in Rome? Would he want Jisung there amongst all his peers and art critics, all these people that belong to a world that isn’t his? Would they be disappointed when they met Jisung? A wallflower to his own self, standing in the shadow of Chenle’s talent.</p><p>He doesn’t want people to see how Chenle paints him and think he’s like that. He’s not that amazing — he doesn’t glow this way.</p><p>“Do you want me to?”</p><p>“It’s your art.”</p><p>“I’m not just putting your naked body up on a wall for people to see.”</p><p>Jisung swallows. “If you want to. I—” he glances back at Chenle, who’s looking at him with a spark of curiosity, eyes wide, face open. “I don’t get why you keep making me look like that.”</p><p>“I just paint what I see,” Chenle says. He gives Jisung a smile, soft as the brush of a gossamer wing. “And I see you.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. too good to be true</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The discothèque is in Monterosso — two villages up, ten minutes on the train. They mill around the pier in Manarola for most of the day, Chenle lying on a towel or sitting out on the rocks painting while Jisung is swimming, the two of them stopping to grab gelato (twice) and eat lunch at a restaurant right on the water’s edge. In the late afternoon they make the half hour trek down la via dell'Amore to Riomaggiore, stopping at the point of one of the fingers of the cliffs to rest their arms on the stone wall and stare out over the sea.</p><p>It’s a nice moment. A nice walk. One Jisung has made countless times. The trail was named for the numerous young lovers who’d sneak out onto it during the night time, and Jisung was definitely part of a long tradition — eager to get away from his parents prying eyes.</p><p>A memory that’s revitalised with Chenle at his side — rewritten into something even more beautiful. He stops and stares out over the sea, and the whole world seems to slow down, frozen in a moment before he exhales and shuts his eyes, wind carding through his hair.</p><p>“This is paradise,” Chenle says. “Seriously, Jisung. This is the most beautiful place in the world.”</p><p>He can’t help but agree. The colours of the villages hugging the coastlines — peach, lemon, terracotta orange. The fishing boats bobbing in the sea. Hot sun and dry earth, vineyards crawling along the ridges behind them. A group of tourists pass them, chattering in French, and Chenle slides his palm across the top of the wall, until he’s resting his hand against Jisung’s — until all Jisung has to do is turn his hand over to twine their fingers together.</p><p>Chenle doesn’t look back at him. He just stares out to the sea and smiles. They don’t let go of each other the whole descent into Riomaggiore, and Jisung finds his heart beats a little faster in his chest — though it’s not sure if it’s just from the steep climb, or something else.</p><p>They eat an early dinner watching the sun dip into the waves on the harbour’s edge, Chenle feeding him half the antipasto off the tips of his fingers, drinking wine and trying to guess the stories of the tourists who wander by. It’s a good evening — warm, bright, golden sun, Chenle’s laughter, playing with his fingers across the small glass table. The stone walls of the harbour rise around them and a few swimmers float in the brilliant blue sea, and Jisung agrees: this is paradise.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Get up!” Chenle says, circling his fingers around Jisung’s wrists and tugging him to his feet. “Come <em>on</em>! Get up! Let’s dance. How are you gonna take me to a disco and not dance?”</p><p>“I’m not taking you anywhere,” Jisung protests, even as he’s getting to his feet, matching Chenle’s supernova grin with one of his own. “You’re the one who wanted to come out here!”</p><p>“You’re a <em>dancer</em>!” Chenle shouts, ignoring him as he jumps across the sand. “Come on and dance!”</p><p>The music blasts from the speakers, bodies twirling around them, and Jisung can’t really ignore that. He can’t ignore the way Chenle shakes his hips, laughing and dancing, singing the lyrics to the song at the top of his lungs and miming the synths with his hands.</p><p>“Fine!” Jisung shouts back. It takes him a minute to get into it — Chenle grinning at him the entire time, joy shining out from every pore in his body — but when he does it’s simple. It’s easy. His body was always made to move to the rhythm. Ballet, hip-hop, dance-pop. He knows how to find the thread, the heart of the song, and then move to it.</p><p>And when he does it’s worth it. If only to see the way Chenle lights up — the way he grabs his hands and swings with him.</p><p>“That’s it!” Chenle says, and it feels like he’s fourteen all over again. It feels like every summer of his youth — bright lights, loud music, the crash of the waves. The rough sand between his toes, the chatter around him, cigarette smoke and alcohol, girls in sundresses twirling, hands on hips, sunshine and warm heat. It feels like he never left — that he’s lived here forever. Him and Chenle, forever and ever. Warm hands on warm hands. He puts his hands on Chenle’s hips, and holds him against him and they move together, eyes locked.</p><p>“How long has it been?” Chenle asks, the track switching over to a Spagna song Jisung distinctly remembers dancing to on his eighteenth.</p><p>“Since what?”</p><p>Chenle takes his hand and does a twirl, laughing as he comes back to him. “Since you’ve danced like this!”</p><p>“Years! I partied a bit in London, but my ex-boyfriend wasn’t the type.”</p><p>“That’s no fun! Discothèque is an Italian right!”</p><p>"Well I'm sorry! I guess I forgot my rights!"</p><p>“No fun! Hey, did you used to dance like <em>this</em>?” Chenle asks, and he flattens himself against him, grabbing his ass in his hands and nosing at his jawline, breathing hot when he leans in to murmur in his ear. “You seem like the type.”</p><p>Jisung feels the heat flush straight through him — from his cheeks right down his chest, a spark lit inside him. Chenle dousing him in gasoline, then throwing the match with a kiss to the base of his jaw.</p><p>“When I was young, maybe. I never really liked partying.”</p><p>“You never liked partying? But you said you partied!”</p><p>“That was different. It was with my friends!”</p><p>“Whatever!” Chenle says. “I’ll make a party boy out of you yet!”</p><p>“Why, do you party in Rome?”</p><p>“Not like this! Not on the beach! This is so much cooler.”</p><p>They dance. They move. Chenle puts his hands on Jisung’s hips and turns him around and he feels the heat of his chest pressed to his back, his lips on the back of his neck. He grinds against him, and Jisung pushes back, moving, music floating around them until they turn again — face to face for the briefest of seconds before Chenle kisses him.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Wait there,” Chenle says, resting his hand on Jisung’s shoulder when he presses a quick kiss to his lips. “I’ll get more drinks!”</p><p>He’s off, dancing across the beach, barefoot and laughing, sand stuck in his leg hair, hips swinging as he moves to the beat of the song. Jisung watches him go, warmth blooming in his chest, and leans back in the plastic chair with a smile on his face.</p><p>He’d been hesitant about coming up here — mostly because it’s been so long since he’d been to a proper Italian discothèque — but now he’s here, swimming in the music with Chenle, he’s happy he did. It’s a simple thing, but it’s something outside their little bubble. Doing things together with other people, a reminder that Chenle was real and breathing, that he existed alongside everyone else and was not just a mirage.</p><p>He’s watching the couples dancing — two girls in spaghetti strap tops and equally vibrant shorts who seem to be perpetually a few seconds away from kissing — when he hears someone behind him, asking in broken Italian if anyone speaks English. He twists in his chair, glancing around until he spots the culprit — two Englishmen with sunburnt noses and sunglasses pushed up into their hair.</p><p>“I do,” Jisung says, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the music. He lifts his hand into the air, waving to get their attention then hopping to his feet. “I do. What do you need?”</p><p>They look to be about his age — definitely tourists. The coastline doesn’t start to swarm with them until the end of July, usually, and but there’s always a fair share around any time the summer comes around. Cinque Terre is world famous, after all.</p><p>“We were exploring the coast today and we hiked up to here. It’s beautiful but… well, there’s no bus to bring us back to La Spezia,” one of them says. He’s wearing a polo shirt with all the buttons undone and there’s a bottle of beer in his hand. “Where are you staying?”</p><p>“At my house?” Jisung answers, raising an eyebrow.</p><p>“Oh! You live here? Do you know where we could stay?”</p><p>As he’s asking it Chenle slides up next to Jisung, sticking an Aperol spritz into his hand with little grace. “What’s happening here?” he asks, grinning at the two of them, wild and reckless. There’s a fleck of blue paint on his cheek.</p><p>“They don’t speak Italian,” Jisung tells him. “They’re looking for a place to stay.”</p><p>“If your house wasn’t in disrepair…” Chenle muses. “You could have housed them.”</p><p>Jisung rolls his eyes. “There’s a lot of BnBs in the new town,” he answers, turning back to them and swapping to English. “A lot of them will be booked, but if you wander around you should be able to find someone. Or help you find one. The train runs until midnight though, if you head to the station you should be fine.”</p><p>He doesn’t live here, but he’s been here enough times to know half the village. Again — it’s Cinque Terre. Half the place at this point is accommodation for tourists.</p><p>“Really?” The man glances at his friend, who shrugs. “Cheers.”</p><p>“No worries,” Jisung says, waving at them as they turn away and talk between each other.</p><p>“Look at you,” Chenle says, elbowing him with a grin. “You’re a Lonely Planet guide now, are you?”</p><p>“I <em>live</em> here,” Jisung says. He rolls his eyes and takes a sip of his drink, dodging away as Chenle tries to jostle him again. “They were looking for an English speaker. I wanted to help.”</p><p>“My little tour guide...” Chenle starts, though he cuts himself off, face frozen for a second. The music thuds and a great roar echoes in Jisung’s ears, like a tsunami crashing over him, leaving him dripping in water before Chenle clears his throat and turns away. “You should think about it,” he says, voice a little softer. “About what you’re doing with the house, I mean. I dunno. Clean it up, right?"</p><p>"I <em>have </em>been thinking," Jisung says, pursing his lips for a second.</p><p>"Still," Chenle says.</p><p>What he’d said before still bounces around the inside of his brain like a loose screw in a washer, and it takes him a second or two to really process what Chenle is implying.</p><p>“Still what?”</p><p>Before he’d started talking about the house, Chenle had called him <em>his</em>.</p><p>“It’s a beautiful house.” Chenle shrugs. “What else are you gonna do with it?”</p><p>“It feels too soon to think about that,” Jisung says. He takes another sip of his drink, trying to cover up the flush in his cheeks.</p><p>“You don’t need to make any choices,” Chenle says, and he trails a hand up Jisung’s arm, palm warm where he flattens it across his bicep. “Just think about it?”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They go back onto the dancefloor, leaving their drinks by their seats, moving together under the lights strung up from the plastic roof of the tent. Chenle dances in front of Jisung, throwing his head back, leaning into him, and in turn Jisung puts his hands on his stomach and holds him close, music thudding in his bones, everything blurring into a whirlwind of heat and touch and sounds, his breath in his ears, Chenle’s lips against his, dancing face to face, resting their foreheads together. That same gasoline, that same match. It all burns up, and they go running away onto the beach together, away from the light and revelry, smooth sand under their feet, hand in hand with laughter in their throats.</p><p>Chenle breaks away, taunting him, a cutout in the gloom, and when Jisung catches up to him he kisses him fiercely — rucking his hands through his hair, biting at his lips, until he’s gasping and laughing, until it all overflows from him like a champagne bottle with the cork popped, bright and bubbling, sweet where it spills across the sand.</p><p>The moon is strong and the water is silvered, waves a gentle crash, the air swimming with latent summer heat. Chenle throws his shirt at Jisung’s head, and before he even realises what he’s doing his shorts come next, and then he’s off, a pale streak in the moonlight, running into the water and laughing like a madman.</p><p>“Wait!” Jisung shouts, and Chenle turns around, arms spread wide, a million stars glittering like camera flashes in the darkness of the sky behind him.</p><p>“Wait for what?! Take your clothes off, come on! Let’s swim.”</p><p>The music still plays, echoing across the expanse of the beach. Jisung hesitates for a second, but Chenle is already up to his shins in the water, screaming for him to follow him. He throws Chenle’s clothes onto the sand and pulls his shirt off, almost falling over in his haste to get his shorts off, before he’s following him, shouting at him to wait even as Chenle wades out further.</p><p>“Do you know the Ligurian Sea is one of the warmest parts of the Mediterranean?” Chenle says, bare chest shining in the moonlight, arms raised. He’s up to his waist and Jisung has to wade out to him, cool water lapping at his calves as he sinks deeper.</p><p>“Who told you that?”</p><p>“Dunno. Read it in a book once. Isn’t it refreshing? Did you go swimming in England?”</p><p>“In an indoor pool, yeah. I’m not swimming in the Thames. It’s dangerous as hell and I’d probably end up with an extra finger or something from all the muck in there.”</p><p>Chenle laughs, spinning around and flicking a few drops of water at Jisung. “I knew you were a swimmer. You look it.”</p><p>“It was good for my leg! Swimming is easier on the limbs.”</p><p>“You’re gonna end up being one of those middle aged ladies doing water-walking!”</p><p>“Hey!” Jisung feels almost affronted at that. He’s a <em>good</em> swimmer. He always has been. “I’m probably better than you!”</p><p>“Maybe,” Chenle says. “But I have style!”</p><p>They’re still wading out, water up to their chests, lapping at their skin. When the waves come sometimes Jisung lets his feet lift off the sand, floating up for a second before dipping back down. It’s not a strong current, nor are the waves large, and it’s pleasant, a gentle pull around his body as he finally catches up with Chenle, cupping water in his hands and dumping it on his head.</p><p>“You do <em>not</em>,” Jisung says with a laugh, and in return Chenle shoulder checks him, wrapping his arms around his waist and picking him up in an attempt to knock him over.</p><p>Jisung just goes with it. He leans backwards and wraps his arms around Chenle at the last second, and they both go under, water swallowing them up, surfacing again with sea water on their tongues and laughter bursting forth.</p><p>“I deserved that,” Chenle says, and there’s so many stars around him he looks like a painting — like he should be immortalised on a fresco in a villa. Stepped down from the heavens, shining in the moonlight. The water curls around him and Jisung’s hand still rests on his waist, and it’s so easy for him to step forward and kiss him.</p><p>The salt bursts through his mouth, the kiss almost immediately turning deep. Chenle’s hand comes up to grasp the back of his neck and their noses knock together, his entire being surging into it.</p><p>It’s not pretty. It’s not pretty but it doesn't matter, because no-one can see them — they’re just two silver strokes amongst the dark sea, waves breaking around their bodies, hands on each other. When they break apart Chenle leans his head back, laughter bursting forth, and he hangs off Jisung, bobbing in the waves.</p><p>Behind him the entire coastline is alight. Lights of the village pressed against the cradle of the valley like fireflies, the streetlights on the road, the moon high above them, fat and waxy in the inky black sky. All the cosmos, all of heaven surrounding him, and he looks so beautiful Jisung feels like he’s floating in nothingness — like he’s falling in love dizzyingly fast.</p><p>It hasn’t been long. Not long enough for him to feel like this. Not for him to stare at Chenle and feel something seize in his chest. Something that should feel like an iron tight grip around his lungs but instead feels free — like staring up at the stars and letting gravity take him. Like the whole world should belong to Chenle.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Everything is bright when they get back to Manarola. They’re both damp, still, shirts clinging to their chests, and there’s chatter everywhere, the signs of a night still alive. A band plays in the plaza and the water rushes up the boat ramp, couples sitting on its edge with their hands joined. The streetlamps are deep yellow, light pooling on the cobblestones like puddles after the rain, and all around them people sit on their balconies, snatches of conversation filtering in and out as they wind through the alleys. Their hands brush together as they climb up a narrow staircase framed by olive trees, and when they get to the top of it, breathless and tired, Chenle presses him against the handrail and kisses him.</p><p>It all explodes within him. Breath like sparks, a touch of brightness. A whirlwind of colour, the whole world becoming theirs. Chenle threads their fingers together and puts his hand on Jisung’s waist and Jisung sighs against him, melting into it, running his hands through his sea salt thick hair and savouring every second.</p><p>The walk back is easy. Wordless. Lights twinkling in front of them and behind them. Chenle takes his hand and twirls him, and they run through the streets together, their laughter echoing off the walls of the houses, clatter of their footsteps on the cobblestones.</p><p>Inside his house he kisses him — again. The lights are off and everything is cast in amber and charcoal, and Chenle puts his hands on his waist, swaying like he’s dancing to an invisible beat. Not invisible for long, because he leaves Jisung for a second, turning on the stereo to a burst of static and voices, before he puts a cassette in and hits play, horns and strings filling the air as he takes Jisung’s hand in his again.</p><p>“Dance with me,” he says, and how could Jisung ever resist? He takes Chenle’s waist in his hand, threading their fingers together, swaying with him. Their steps are awkward at first — it’s clearly been a few years since Chenle has done any sort of waltz, but eventually they fall into a rhythm. Eventually it’s just them and the music, the two of them slow dancing in the moonlight, and Chenle looks up at him and smiles, eyes lidded and filled with starlight.</p><p>“I don’t want this summer to ever end,” Chenle says. He sways, slow, squeezing at Jisung’s hand, the singer on the tape crooning about endless love to the two of them.</p><p>“Me neither,” Jisung says. “I wish we could stay like this forever.”</p><p>Chenle sighs, resting his head on Jisung’s shoulder, sliding his hand higher to clutch at his back. The whole world is alive and warm. The whole world is in Jisung’s arms.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It’s like when Chenle is there, Jisung forgets about everything else. He forgets his purpose — loose as it was — in coming home, the to-do list he’d written in his head. He forgets who he is sometimes — pinned under Chenle’s gaze, under the way he paints him. He forgets that summer cannot last forever, and that in just a few weeks Chenle will return home and all Jisung will have is an empty house full of dust and spiders.</p><p>A house that seems bigger every time he gets to it, like some kind of eldritch being. Another room, another bathroom, another closet he wished he’d known about when they played hide and seek. All along the hardwood he hears the echoes of footsteps and children’s laughter — ghosts of twenty years past, of a time when the house used to be full of life.</p><p>How he wishes to go back to then.</p><p>Cleaning is slow work, but he doesn’t mind it. He hadn’t minded it when he’d first arrived, and he doesn’t mind it now. It provides him with a distraction — hard work that forces him to focus on the task at hand rather than the doubts that churn inside of him like a typhoon. It lets him achieve something where he feels like he has nothing. He scrubs out yet another bathtub — this one so dusty that when he first turns the tap on it spits dirt and the corpses of a few spiders at him. He carries around the tape deck with him, music blasting, and gets to work, slipping into a trance, until he emerges coated head to toe in dust and ravenous with hunger.</p><p>The sun is dipping low and the birdsong is loud, and he leans against the kitchen wall, phone in hand, reminisce of the way his eomma used to do when he was a child — when he’d sit on the floor with a mixing bowl and a wooden spoon he’d operate with both hands, helping mix up whatever she was cooking that night with the fervor only a six year old could muster.</p><p>He’s mildly surprised Chenle picks up, though it quickly fades to resignation when Chenle informs him there’s a phone in the studio. That he hadn’t been waiting for Jisung — he’d just answered because it was right there. Jisung asks him if he wants to come over for dinner — to cook the last of the gnocchi — and Chenle invites him to bring it back to his place again.</p><p>“I was thinking,” he starts.</p><p>“Oh no.”</p><p>“Hey, don’t get cheeky,” Chenle says, though there’s laughter sparkling on the edge of his words. “I was thinking about what you said a few nights ago. You wanted me to paint on you. If you want, you can come over tonight and we can do that?”</p><p>Jisung’s breath catches in his throat. The kitchen is painted in fireball colours, like he’s sitting in the middle of a bonfire, though he emerges unburnt. “Yeah,” he says, and it comes out breathless, all doubts forgiven. “That sounds wonderful.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Chenle smears the paint across his skin, thick, wet, hands digging into his shoulder blades in the same way Jisung had rubbed the sunscreen into his skin before they'd kissed.</p><p>"How much money are you wasting right now?” Jisung asks. He’s lying on his stomach on the floor of Chenle’s studio, fabric drop sheet beneath him, Chenle crouched over him.</p><p>Chenle snorts.“Not much,” he says. “They’re cheap acrylics. I wouldn’t be using so much if I was using expensive ones.”</p><p>“Ouch. Are you saying I’m too cheap for the good ones?”</p><p>“No. I just wouldn’t waste expensive ones when it’s temporary.”</p><p>Something in Jisung’s chest pangs at that, and he’s glad Chenle can’t see his face.</p><p>“I suppose that’s smart, considering you’re giving me a second skin?”</p><p>“I’m not giving you a second skin. I’m giving you wings.”</p><p>“<em>Wings</em>?”</p><p>“You always look like you’re about to fly,” Chenle says, fingers dancing across his spine, dabbing at the knobs of bone like they’re threatening about to burst through. Feathered. <em>Wings</em>. “Like you’re from another world.”</p><p>Jisung swallows. The drop sheet crinkles underneath him and Chenle draws circles with the tips of his fingers, absolute silence reigning until he tells Jisung to stand up.</p><p>This is the moment he enjoys most. When he stands in front of Chenle and receives the full force of his undivided attention, it makes all the discomfort of staying still for his paintings worth it. He swears he’ll never tire of being under his gaze — of feeling the sheer warmth he exudes, the way it feels like he’s being taken apart by his eyes. It’s exhilarating, burning up, his pulse thundering as Chenle presses a sky blue handprint over his heart, his palm sticking slightly to his skin. Chenle leans in and presses a soft kiss to his lips before he takes it away — not allowing Jisung more than a cursory taste of him.</p><p>It’s torturous. The touch of his fingers, the intimacy of it all. The way Chenle looks at him, the way he touches him. He paints lines under his pectorals, following the natural curve of his muscles — gold on his obliques, four fingers to run across the outline of his abs, as if he’s plunging his hands into his skin and tearing him open. Back up his sides and sweeping around his back, painting stitches in his skin, then breaking them apart.</p><p>Except instead of blood it's light that spills out. Iridescent. Pearly silver mixed with the high blue of the summer waves, and everywhere Jisung looks he can see Chenle's mark on him. Everywhere he looks he sees his hands. He feels possessed. They belong to each other, in some way or another. His skin glows and when Chenle looks up at him again he cups his cheeks in his hands and kisses him. Long, slow. Greedy. He belongs to him. Not just on the paper, but in his mind and in his heart. This is Chenle’s signature on him. His art, come to life.</p><p>“You’re my angel,” Chenle murmurs, and he presses another kiss to Jisung’s lips. “You glow like you’re from heaven, Jisung. A falling star.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He paints fast. Wet and messy, brush creating quick strokes against the paper. There is no precision here — it's not as meticulous as Chenle had been when Jisung was on the bed. It's raw and quick, the paint on his palms cracking, everything muddying together as he constantly looks back to Jisung, eyes flickering between him and his ghost. The scent of the paint is strong in the air and Jisung tries to control his breath, willing the acrylic smeared all over his stomach to stay in one piece as Chenle captures him.</p><p>It doesn’t take long, and maybe it’s because every time Chenle looks back at him he can see the fire in his eyes. He can taste it, too, when Chenle kisses him. Heaven’s fire on his tongue, and when Jisung feels out the planes of his back he expects to feel wings, six like the Seraphim, like Chenle has touched Earth only to show him what glory might be. Unquenchable heat, unquenchable thirst. Love and brilliance, the way he kisses him like the world might end at any moment.</p><p>He lowers him to the floor and Jisung feels the paint on his back smear — thick lumps not quite dried running against the drop sheet, Chenle’s sticky hands on his cheeks. He cradles him between his palms, holding on to him like the world might fall away without him — like he’s a light in the midst of a pitch black night. His kisses with zeal, his words an ardent flame. Heaven and Earth. The two of them entwined, colour everywhere, salt on their skin, the waves crashing in the distance and the whole world becoming them.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>When he wakes in the morning — Chenle’s arm slung across his chest — bells are ringing. It takes him a second to work out why, the fuzziness of sleep still lingering on his brain. He’s still a little tired — a little sore, too, since the studio floor hadn’t been easy on his back.</p><p>It’s Sunday. He turns his head to the side and finds Chenle is awake, watching him with catlike eyes. When they meet each other’s gaze his face breaks into a full blown smile and he blows a kiss to Jisung.</p><p>“Good morning sleeping beauty,” he says. Jisung groans.</p><p>“It’s Sunday,” he says.</p><p>“Well done. Did you think you’d slept in until noon?”</p><p>“For a second, yeah.”</p><p>“Mmm, no such luck. God’s glory is being sung, and instead we’re here in bed reflecting on the sins of the past night.”</p><p>“Well when you put it like that,” Jisung says, trailing off, then laughing as Chenle pinches his skin.</p><p>Chenle yawns, shaking his hair out then blinking. He holds up a paint streaked hand. “I feel like you’re trying to put all the blame on me. It was your idea to have me fingerpaint you, remember?”</p><p>“Mmmm, trying to work out if that was a bad idea or not. How do the sheets look right now?”</p><p>“I got most of it off you in the shower,” Chenle says, picking at a tiny lump of white dried on one of his ribs, a fleck like seafoam. “But we’ll probably have to change the sheets anyway. You’ll be looking a little sparkly for the next few days. If anyone asks you why, you can just say art. It’ll probably make sense.”</p><p>“Thanks for the out,” Jisung says. He picks up Chenle’s hand, inspecting the smears of green like chlorophyll on the pads of thumbs. “You’re not worried about missing mass?”</p><p>“Mmmm. Not really religious.”</p><p>“Oh?” Jisung raises an eyebrow.</p><p>Chenle shrugs. “Mama isn’t, so I wasn’t. We’d go to church just to fit in but… never really followed it.” He clears his throat. “I wasn’t born here. I was born in Shanghai.”</p><p>“That makes sense then,” Jisung says. “One of my first memories is Sunday mass. All that stained glass and stone. I was baptised, you know. All my siblings were.”</p><p>“I wasn’t,” Chenle says. “Guess I’m going to hell.”</p><p>“Aren’t we already going to hell? We had pre-marital sex.”</p><p>Chenle’s face scrunches up for a second. “Okay, true. But isn’t baptism like… forgiving your sins from your past life?”</p><p>“It’s supposed to cleanse you of the original sin.” Jisung doesn’t really remember much of bible study, if he’s to be honest. “I think.”</p><p>“So I’m a sinner then?” Chenle says with a grin. Jisung grins back, trailing his fingers up and down his arm.</p><p>“We both are,” Jisung reminds him, and a hot rush floods through him, flood gates open, Chenle’s smile so devilish he wants to be swallowed whole.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>After a breakfast almost derailed by Jisung’s almost unbearable want to touch Chenle, the two of them go back up to the pond — Chenle hauling an entire bag of art supplies with him, Jisung bringing only his sunglasses, hat and the clothes on his back. When they get to the water he doesn’t even bother to wait — it’s scorchingly hot and he jumps straight off the end of the dock, the cool water enveloping his limbs and waking him up like a slap to the face. When he surfaces there’s pond weed tickling his toes, and Chenle is waving at him, grinning at him from where he’s setting up. He pulls out the legs of his easel and plants it down on a fairly flat section of grass, crouching down to flip open the lid of his steel paint box and getting to work choosing his colours.</p><p>“You’re gonna swim, right?” Jisung asks, treading water. Chenle nods, grasping a fistful of paint tubes.</p><p>“Of course,” he says. “Let me paint while the sun is here though. Before the shadows move.”</p><p>It’s good to be back. Back to where this all started — where he’d first seen Chenle emerge from the water, sopping wet and wearing those damn low waisted shorts. The sunlight glimmers on the water’s surface and Jisung swims without aim, stopping eventually to float on his back and stare up at the endless blue sky — so perfect it feels like he’s staring at a canvas instead — like a great brushstroke painted by Chenle. Like he’s inside one of his paintings.</p><p>Which he supposes he is. He’s inside a lot of his paintings — though he doesn’t like to think about that one too long. The thought sours the excitement of swimming and eventually he pulls himself from the water to lie on the dock, hiding in the shade of the willow trees. Chenle still hasn’t joined him — he seems content to just paint. To watch him as if he’s a subject to observe, not the real life boy he’d shared his bed with for so many nights.</p><p>Jisung knows he can’t linger on it — because if he does then the twisting in his stomach will come back, and if that comes back then everything will start to break apart, cracking like old mortar, crumbling in his fingers even as he so desperately tries to hold it together.</p><p>He shouldn’t resent. He shouldn’t let it go on too long. Chenle has a choice, and he’s making it, and Jisung has no right to resent him for it. It’s the same old mantra — Chenle has a life in Rome. Jisung isn’t needed.</p><p>By the time he hears the creak of the dock wood he’s almost dozed off, willow leaves whispering above him, cicadas like ringing in his ears. He lifts his hat from his face and glances at Chenle, his mouth going dry at the sight of his bare chest.</p><p>“You’re too late.” Jisung says, trying to play it off as casual.</p><p>“I’m too late?” Chenle asks. He pokes Jisung’s arm with his toes. “It’s like two. How am I too late?”</p><p>“I’ve had my swim. Don’t wanna go back in. I’m almost dry,” Jisung says. He yawns. The heat is so oppressive he’s pretty sure that if he lays down for much longer he’ll turn into a puddle, and going back into the water <em>is</em> probably a good idea, but also Jisung is tired. He feels bitter, in a way — that he’d wanted to swim with Chenle in the same way they’d done when they’d met, but Chenle had chosen to paint over spending time with him again. It wouldn’t bother him so much if they weren’t on a timer that was quickly running, or if yesterday morning, when they were sitting at the dining table discussing the discothèque together, Chenle hadn’t promised to spend more time with him.</p><p>Relax. He’d said he’d needed to relax, and yet he was still working. Still painting.</p><p>“Come on,” Chenle coos. He pokes Jisung’s arm again and Jisung groans, sitting up, fingers scrabbling at the planks as he props himself up.</p><p>“Please stop touching me with your toes.”</p><p>Chenle laughs. “Fine. Come swim for a bit, pretty please?”</p><p>“Fine,” Jisung says. He mirrors Chenle’s smile, but he finds when he does it doesn’t feel quite right — like there’s something lingering beyond. A dark shape under the surface of the water, gasoline lining the inside of his throat. Like he’s teetering on the brink of something he can’t quite see, about to fall off the cliff into waters unknown.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Maybe he’s made this all up. Maybe it’s a cross stitch of his own creation, a fantasy in his head. He holds Chenle’s body against his and tastes the sweat on his skin, feels the way his muscles shift alongside his bones, feels the way he’s aligned, the heat that thrums beneath the surface — he does all this, he moves with him — and it doesn’t seem like it could be real. It was too good. It was too much. Forbidden in a way, something he shouldn’t have had. Chenle was too good. It all falls apart.</p><p>Is this penance? He has returned home — he’s forgotten everything. London is a blur in his mind. Limping across the stage under the bright lights, under the thousands of faces that looked like puncture wounds in the skin of the oily black darkness of the ceremony hall — it’s all just a dream. He’s a good person. He deserves good things.</p><p>Chenle is too good.</p><p>Time slips through his fingers. Grains of sand in the wind. The heads of the wildflowers knock together as he sits on the cliff’s edge, Chenle behind him, always a paintbrush in hand. The sea is brilliant cerulean and the sky is infinite, and all Jisung wants is Chenle. It feels like the only time he has is gone, and everything else is just a consolation prize. That he’s become a copy, only living in Chenle’s art.</p><p>Is he even a person? Sometimes he doesn’t feel it. He was a cog in the capitalist machine in London. Now he’s just a thing for Chenle to paint — something that makes pretty art, and nothing else. He’s not that good. He doesn’t shine like the boy on the canvas. The boy that drips in sunlight, The boy with wings, bright blue like the endless sea. The boy Chenle painted stitches on — and broke apart.</p><p>“There’s not much time,” Jisung says, and the cicadas drone like TV static.</p><p>“I know.” Chenle gives him a sad smile, like he can see where the light leaks out of Jisung. Like he sees the shadow beneath. Just a boy from Liguria, alone in a big house filled with memories.</p><p>Alone in the lounge, the fallboard of the piano flipped up. The keys are naked, save for a few particles of dust. Jisung doesn’t remember how to play piano. Only a few pieces. He can’t create art like Chenle, not any more. Not with his leg, twisted and broken, fine on the surface, though carrying it around weighs on him sometimes.</p><p>The light spills through the windows. Everything is empty. Jisung finishes clearing out the bedrooms on the first floor, and within his, he finds his violin. Still in its case, woefully out of tune. He sits on the balcony, flowers spilling out of the boxes, moss thick on the bricks, iron wrought railing and vines climbing up the columns, staring out into the orchard where the peaches hang heavy from the branches. He sits on the balcony and he tunes it, bit by bit. It takes a second to remember how to hold the bow, and for a while it doesn’t sing. It screeches, out of tune, ugly. Bit by bit he turns the pegs. Bit by bit the birds sing. Bit by bit, his violin sings, too.</p><p>The chair is old and warm, foam spilling out of the cushion, legs rusted. The sea breeze hits this side of the house directly, carried straight off the ocean. He can smell it as he plays, late afternoon sun kissing the grass. There’s chickens in the yard. He thinks if he closes his eyes he can imagine Manarola, the hustle and bustle of the streets. The water lapping at the concrete of the dock. He thinks if he closes his eyes he can imagine Chenle.</p><p>He opens his eyes. He isn’t imagining.</p><p>“You found it,” Chenle says, staring up at him from the lawn. There’s daisies on the grass, surrounding him like teardrops in snow. He has no bag. He’s only wearing his shorts and a sleeveless shirt, sunglasses pushed up into his hair, tan skin, wide smile. “Look at you,” he says.</p><p>Jisung still won’t forgive him for leaving him all alone, but for now the sentiment is enough. Chenle is right here when he’s supposed to be in the studio — and maybe that’s reason enough. Maybe he’s allowed to entertain the warmth in his chest, just for a moment. Let it spread through him like sunlight over the hills.</p><p>Chenle lets himself in through the front door and Jisung keeps playing, swaying in the light breeze, watching the way the dappled sunlight kisses the hot dirt. He hears the creak of the floorboard and the slam of the door — always too heavy, that one — but Chenle doesn’t put his hand on him. He just listens, always at Jisung’s back, as Jisung plays to the empty yard. As he remembers what it’s like to create something from nothing — to feel the music thrum through his fingers.</p><p>“You look so beautiful,” Chenle says. Jisung lets his violin rest in his lap, bow crossed against its body.</p><p>“You always tell me that,” he says.</p><p>Chenle rests his hand on his shoulder, warm as ever. He’s cleaned off most of the paint, only a faint sheen of blue and a few flecks of brown on his wrist. Jisung is sure he’s carrying a whole palette against his bare stomach, but Jisung doesn’t see that. He just looks up and sees Chenle, face red from the trek up the hillside, canines like cat’s fangs when he grins at him.</p><p>“Because it's true.”</p><p>“You left your paint at home,” Jisung says, running a finger against the strings of the violin, brushing off some of the residue from the rosin. It comes out slightly pointed, slightly sarcastic, and more than anything — tired. It makes his heart ache to want like this, to miss Chenle so sorely. And to have him come here, now...</p><p>“Yeah. I wanted to be here with you.”</p><p>Maybe he forgets it for a moment. Maybe they sit in the lounge together and the light still spills in, but it’s not empty this time. It’s filled with two souls, and it’s filled with music. Jisung stands beside the piano, violin on his shoulder, and Chenle sits on the stool, looking for every part like he was born to be there. Like he was born to be in this house, in this very moment, matching every note Jisung plays, every melody he creates. There’s an ease in it — the way they seem to just get each other. If Chenle starts, Jisung follows, and if Jisung starts, Chenle follows, like they both anticipate each other’s thoughts. Two dancers, spinning on a plate, spinning on a record, spinning in the music.</p><p>Spinning together. Hand in hand. Sea breeze and gull cries, the grass tickling his ankles. Fruit juice dribbling down their chins, and it’s like the darkness in Jisung’s chest rescinds — just for a moment. He doesn’t worry, just for a second.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. the heart laid bare</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There’s paint on Chenle’s neck. Jisung kisses it that night. Jisung memorises the shape of him beneath him. He doesn’t think of the boy in the paintings, he doesn’t think of the imaginary version of him in Chenle’s mind. He just thinks of how he feels. How he made him feel. The happiness in those first few days, the whole world becoming theirs. He doesn’t think of time, or anything inevitable. He just lives and he hopes that it’s enough.</p><p>“How many days?” Jisung asks. He’s resting his head on Chenle’s bare chest, listening to the rush of his breath, and through the window the stars are out, waves crashing against the cliffs far below.</p><p>It’s been running through his head. Neither of them have spoken about it, but the thought is there. It’s always there. Time is running out, trickling through their fingers like grains of sand in the hourglass.</p><p>“Four,” Chenle says, and it seizes through Jisung, an electric shock, a touch of cruelty. <em>Four days</em>. It would never be enough, but it especially isn’t when Jisung feels that he knows so little of Chenle. It feels like the first chapter of their novel — not the last. It feels like he’s barely scraped the surface.</p><p><em>A few weeks is enough to live a lifetime</em>, his mother had said. If this is a lifetime, then he wants a thousand more. He wants to live forever. It can’t end like this.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It can’t end when all he tastes in his mouth is bitterness. Resentment. He’s only a smudge on the canvas of Chenle’s life — he resents him for making him feel like this. He feels like he’s been ruined in some way or another — knowing that Chenle will take his supernova brightness with him and Jisung will be left alone. Knowing that despite their limited days more often than not he looks at Chenle from behind a canvas, or with a brush in hand — never face to face unless they’re in bed.</p><p>He resents, too, that he forgives him. As soon as they come back together — as soon as Chenle dives off the end of the rocks into the harbour beside him, as soon as they sit together under the pastel coloured houses, as soon as they hike the coastline together, standing on the bluff in Corniglia, Jisung pointing out each of the villages, Chenle laughing as the wind barrelling off the Ligurian sea causes his shirt to billow out behind him. The colours are so bright it’s like someone has cranked up the saturation and Jisung stands with his arms spread wide, yelling out to the sea, screaming that nothing can stop him. Head spinning, heart spinning.</p><p>“Stay with me,” Jisung says—and he knows he doesn’t mean now. The dirt crunches beneath his sneakers, and he means forever. Not just under the lights of Manarola, not just where the street lamps turn them golden, where they alley walls rise around them, where the gulls perch on the edge of the boats and the waves lap at the concrete.</p><p>He means forever and ever.</p><p>He can’t ask that of course, but he wants it.</p><p>“Okay,” Chenle says, his eyes lidded, his smile wide. He clasps Jisung’s hands in his and kisses him, and the moon is barely a sliver, casting the faintest traces of silver on the cobweb clouds hanging in the night sky.</p><p>“Don’t paint,” Jisung says, grasping at his hands. “Please. Just. Stay.”</p><p>The window is open. The sky is an ocean of stars and Jisung feels it flood through his lungs, expanding through his throat as he presses Chenle into the bed, every kiss they share tasting more and more like the last.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The heat is oppressive, even when the moon comes to take its due, and all the windows in Chenle’s house are open, the ocean at their doorstep. Chenle is in the sunroom, as always, and Jisung stands in the doorway for a moment to admire him — the draw of his bare shoulders, the way the mole on his shoulder stands out against his sun kissed skin. How beautiful he always looks, standing in front of the canvas painted the same azure as the sea. Maybe he’s the work of art.</p><p>Jisung crosses the room and rests his hands on Chenle’s shoulders, wordless, pressing a kiss to the side of his neck. When Chenle doesn’t react he kisses him again, eyes on the way Chenle’s fingers dance across his paint brushes. His palette is all blue and white, little dabs of paint not yet mixed, and he hums as Jisung smooths his hands down his arms, squeezing at his biceps and kissing up his neck.</p><p>Chenle shrugs him off, ducking away slightly. “Not now,” he mumbles.</p><p>Jisung frowns. Just for a second. He splays his hand across Chenle’s stomach and goes to kiss his neck again, to which Chenle dodges. Something in Jisung’s chest twists and he drops his hands, not trying again.</p><p>“Wow,” Jisung says, half joking. “Am I that bad?”</p><p>“No,” Chenle says. He dabs at a swirl of paint with his brush and sighs. “Just not now.”</p><p>“Not now? Then when? You leave tomorrow, Chenle.”</p><p>“Exactly,” Chenle says. “I leave tomorrow, so I need to finish this. I want to get my exhibition ready. I told you my agent is on my ass about having something done.”</p><p>“Oh,” Jisung says, and he takes a half step back. “Okay. I get it.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Chenle says. He turns to look at Jisung, and when he meets his eyes it’s like it hums through the air, like a press of the key for far too long. “Jisung?”</p><p>Jisung folds his arms over his chest, protective, like he’s armouring his heart. “It’s okay. I get it. You’d rather paint than spend time with me.”</p><p>“That’s not what I said,” Chenle says.</p><p>A spike of frustration drives its way through Jisung’s heart. “That’s what you’re telling me.”</p><p>“Jisung…” Chenle says. He puts the brush down and faces him properly — at least affording him that. At least affording him his attention. There’s something struck through his voice — a quiver. Like a glass balanced precariously on the edge of a table. “You’re not. I don’t not want you, I just...”</p><p>“You don’t not want me, but you don’t want me. I think I get it, then.”</p><p>“Jisung?” Chenle asks, and his brow crinkles.</p><p>“Yeah?” Jisung says, and he feels something snap, that same glass shattering when it falls to the floor. “That’s my name. I do have one, you know. I’m not just a piece of art. My name is Jisung Park, do you know that? Probably not, I know, since I’m just a perfect muse to you, but I am actually a person.”</p><p>Jisung doesn’t really know what he’s saying, only that once he speaks, words — frustration and anxiety from the past few days and weeks — come bubbling up. It’s dangerously close to the truth. To Jisung spilling everything out — as if the way he looked at Chenle wasn’t enough. As if the way he touched him, the way he wanted to wake up to him and go to sleep beside him every day — as if it didn’t speak volumes already.</p><p>“I—I know you’re a human, Jisung. I’m a human too. I need to get my work done. But am I not spending time with you when I paint you?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Jisung says with a sigh. “Are you? Or is it just you and your elusive muse.”</p><p>Chenle’s face scrunches up even more, mouth slightly open, before he answers: “It’s you and me. Yes, you’re my muse but…”</p><p>“Didn’t realise there was a third person in the room. Chenle, his muse and me, I guess.” He’s not really even talking to Chenle anymore, he’s just ejecting all his thoughts like jetsam, desperately trying to stop this ship from sinking. “He doesn’t know I’m a real person, so maybe we can make that four. Maybe your idea of me can come along too. I’m sure you’ll like that.”</p><p>“Jisung…” Chenle says, and he reaches out, stopping a centimeter from touching Jisung’s cheek, no more words to be said. Jisung wants so badly to lean into it, but instead he stands up straight, defiant, staring into Chenle’s star filled eyes and wishing for him to prove him wrong.</p><p>“All I want is to spend time with you. All I want is just one more night.” He swallows, his heart suddenly lodged in his throat, eyes watering. “I guess you can’t even give me that. I hope your exhibition goes well.”</p><p>He waits for a second, willing Chenle to respond, but when he stares at him — shocked, wide eyed, still so fucking beautiful that Jisung almost considers matryring himself for it for a second — and gives no answer, he understands his choice.</p><p>The staircase thuds beneath his feet, and he’s crying before he even hits the landing — he’s crying when he pulls the sheets over his head and buries his face in his pillow, sobs racking his body with both fear at what he’d said— and the realisation that it was all true.</p><p>He had never been good enough for Chenle. He never would be — just something to hang on the wall for him. Just a part of his art, and nothing more. Everything was falling apart, and soon all he’d have was his empty house and a big wide ocean. Kilometers of blue, and no Chenle.</p><p>He should have known it was too good to be true. He wasn’t allowed to have anything good — it would all slip away eventually. And maybe Chenle had never liked him — not once he’d seen who Jisung really was. He’d been too vulnerable with him, let him know too much about him. The facade hadn’t been very good, and once the splendour and brilliance of Cinque Terre had faded he’d seen Jisung for who he was. Nothing more.</p><p>Jisung sniffs, rolling over so he’s not lying on where his tears had soaked the pillow. He doesn’t want to dwell on it, but his stomach churns like the harbour during a storm, and as he shuts his eyes, willing himself to fall asleep, he sobs again.</p><p>Damn his heart. Damn his stupid, stupid heart. Damn him for believing he could be anything more, that anyone would want someone as lost as he was.</p><p>Damn him for believing that life would ever be kind to him.</p><p>He’s mostly calm when the door opens — eyes screwed shut, pretending to be asleep. The waves slap against the harbour wall and there’s still chatter outside — frogs croaking and birds singing, voices echoing on the night. Chenle doesn’t come to bed — and for a minute Jisung thinks that maybe the wind has blown the door open, before he hears the floorboard creak. The bed dips and the frame groans and Chenle sits on the edge of the mattress for some time, shifting on occasion before he rolls into bed. He pulls the covers up and rests his forehead against Jisung’s spine and Jisung remains frozen, breathing steady.</p><p>Nothing happens. Chenle presses a kiss to his bare back and rolls back over, pulling the sheets up and falling asleep without a word.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The bed is empty when Jisung wakes up. The window is closed and the curtain drawn, and the sunlight leaks from underneath, room cast in grey and yellow. He yawns and rolls out of bed, legs shaky, determined to speak to Chenle, if only to let him enjoy their last few hours together. He rubs the sleep out of his eyes with his knuckles and stumbles down the hall, climbing up the staircase and shoving open the door to the studio, a good morning on the tip of his tongue.</p><p>It dies in an instance.</p><p>The studio is cleared out. Windows cracked open, gentle breeze fluttering through. His first thought is that he doesn’t know how Chenle had fit it all in his bags: where every surface had once been overflowing with colours — tubes of paints, pencils and brushes, cups of muddy water and scraps of sketches — it’s now swept clean. The drop sheet is folded in the corner and his makeshift stands (aka the stacks of magazines) are back down on the floor. Jisung’s eyes sweep the room and something catches in his throat when he realises that on the couch are Chenle’s paintings.</p><p>Five of them — canvas stretched over a wood frame, oils blurred, the summer haze rising off the fabric as if they were portals to another moment in time.</p><p>They’re all of Jisung.</p><p>Jisung in the harbour, turned back towards Chenle, a grin on his face where he floats in the brilliant blue water. Jisung leaning against the fence, looking out to sea. Jisung naked on the bed, golden sunlight spilling over his form. Jisung coated in acrylics, sitting on the couch, his face almost a blur with how quickly Chenle had painted him.</p><p>Jisung in the orchard, fast asleep under the tree, a rose red butterfly perched on his nose. Green grass surrounding him, the world fading away. He can almost smell the high heat, the dry grass and the baked earth, the thick salt of the sea breeze. He goes to step towards them to take a closer look, and when he does he notices there’s another stack of papers on the desk — he notices Chenle’s handwriting, scrawling and messy like a spider dancing across the page.</p><p>He picks up the note. It’s not affixed to anything, just sitting on top of a stack of papers. Below it is a painting of Manarola, looking out from the top of the hill down towards the harbour, each house a bright splash of colour against the green of the farms. In the foreground Jisung is sitting on a stone wall, his back to the painter, straw hat on his head.</p><p><em>Jisung</em>, it reads, <em>I don’t know if these mean anything to you, but they’re probably better in your hands than mine. Thank you for the past few weeks. I’ll never forget you.</em></p><p>He’s signed it with his personal signature — not the artist signature he scrawls in the corner of each artwork — a tiny heart drawn after his name. Jisung puts the note down, a lump in his throat, and picks up the drawings. There’s at least a dozen, and they’re all of him. Him sitting on the chair out front of the house, him standing in the orchard, him swimming in the pond. Him sitting on the floor of the kitchen. His smile — too much gum, always. Each of them is signed, and Jisung puts them back down, cursing as he runs back down the stairs, feet thudding on the hardwood as he sprints down the hall.</p><p><em>Of course</em>. He hadn’t noticed when he’d woken up — too busy wanting to find Chenle again — but the bedroom is empty. All his clothes are packed and gone. Everything is gone. His heart thuds and he curses — rich and thick, tears welling up in the back of his throat. The motherfucker. The absolute <em>motherfucker </em>— Chenle had gone. Chenle had gone but he’d left his paintings behind — he’d left the only thing that had seemed to have mattered. He had a fucking exhibition he needed to fill — he had no fucking paintings in Rome. This was it, and he’d left them here.</p><p>It cracks like glass inside of Jisung. A cage around his heart, splintering.</p><p>He’d left it all behind.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He runs down the steps, taking them two at a time, shuddering when he hits the bottom, already taking off even as the woman who lives downstairs glances over at him, holding her mail in her hand as he takes off out the front door.</p><p>“I’ll be back!” he shouts, and he’s sprinting.</p><p>Out through the narrow alleyways, dodging vendors setting up their wares for the day, almost knocking over a young boy who stares at him with wide eyes as he apologises and spins around. Down the zig-zagging stairs, olive trees hanging over his head, flowers buzzing with bees, sea breeze thick on his tongue. He pushes open the gate and lets it bang against the stone wall, not even bothering to shut it properly, shouting out an apology as he sprints down the main road, flanked by the pastel coloured houses and the trees clinging to the rocks, dodging deliveries being unloaded and over eager tourists, taking a hard left, his footsteps like thunderclaps as he sprints through the tunnel to the train station.</p><p>There’s already a train waiting. He slaps down a five euro note, cursing at the fiddly amount of change he receives in return, cursing as his ticket seems to take a year to print. He practically vaults over the gate, nearly knocking over a group of friends conversing in French as he jumps through the doors, taking the seat closest and practically shaking when he looks out the window to the blue sea.</p><p><em>Go</em>, he thinks. <em>Go. Move. I need to go.</em></p><p>He doesn’t know how long Chenle will stay in La Spezia. It could be a matter of hours — it could be the whole day. He needs to get back to Rome at some point, but the trains run late.</p><p>He prays it’s the whole day. He puts his hands together and puts his head down and prays. One last chance. Don’t let this slip away. Don’t let him lose Chenle.</p><p>The train leaves a few minutes later, peeling off from the coastline straight through the mountains, into an infinite blackness that seems to last forever. Jisung feels like he can feel the weight of the hills bearing down on him — like he has to shoulder it.</p><p>Bursting out into the sunlight is blinding. He’s already on his feet before the train even stops, squeezing through the doors, jogging to the gate and handing his ticket over, not even waiting before he dodges through a throng of tourists to run out of the building. There’s a second where he emerges into the sunlight where he doesn’t know where he’s going, but he quickly spots a sign pointing towards the waterfront, and he’s off.</p><p>He thanks all those years of swimming for this very moment. His legs are sore and his lungs ache, but it doesn’t matter. Jisung still runs. Blue skies above, cream walls of the buildings smearing around him. Across the flat stone, around people taking pictures, restaurant fronts that tempt him with the tantalising taste of cooked food, dodging prams and dogs on leashes, past full flower boxes and ivy spilling over garden walls. When he darts across the road a scooter almost hits him and he throws up his hands in a mock thank you as he keeps going, ignoring the honk of their horn and their animated cursing, ignoring everything except for his single minded purpose to find Chenle.</p><p>The streets widen out again and he hits the main road, sprinting over the pedestrian crossing alongside a group of sunburnt tourists. The statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi passes him by, perpetually rearing up on his bronze horse, brilliant purple flowers blooming around him, and just for a moment Jisung wishes he had a damn horse. It’d certainly make this easier, anyway. The cry of the gulls is loud and shrill, and he sees the sea. It’s a tiny sliver, a spot of blue between palm trees and ivy, the wrought iron railing bent and rusted — but he sees the sea.</p><p>He doesn’t know why he thinks Chenle will be there. Sixth sense, maybe. A vain hope. He’d always wanted to paint the sea. Cobblestones hard under his feet, hundreds of boats bobbing at the marina, and there’s so many people on the waterfront that Jisung just has to stop for a second, panting, red faced, sweat dripping down his forehead as he stares at the throngs of the crowd.</p><p>How the hell is he supposed to find him?</p><p>“Have you seen a Chinese guy with paint all over his arms?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Have you seen a Chinese guy with paint all over his arms?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>(Repeat. Running down the waterfront. A gull turns and looks at him, black eyes searching. <em>Have you seen him</em>? Jisung wants to plead, but it’s just a bird.)</p><p>“Have you—”</p><p>The water glitters and there’s no clouds in the sky. A man selling gelato asks him who he’s looking for.</p><p>“My friend. He’s Chinese. About this tall. He’ll be covered in paint, have you—”</p><p>“I think he bought from me about ten minutes ago.”</p><p>Jisung’s heart jumps, beating even harder than ever before. He was here. He’s here. He jogs along the water’s edge, past children playing on the ornamental cannons and fishermen in fold-out chairs, looking for Chenle’s familiar shape. Hoping he’d stayed, that he hadn’t gone back into the town.</p><p>When Jisung sees him it feels like a dream. Chenle doesn’t notice him — not at first. He’s sitting on the waterfront, legs dangling off the edge, gelato in his hand, wearing those same red shorts that Jisung had first seen him in.</p><p>Jisung freezes. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s worried that if says something — if he speaks to him — everything will shatter. He worries that maybe it <em>is</em> really a dream. He’ll wake up soon, or Chenle will fade like a ghost.</p><p>And then he doesn’t have to move. Chenle turns around, and when he sees him his mouth falls open, eyes going wide.</p><p>“Jisung?” he says, incredulous. A dribble of gelato falls down the side of the cone, running over his fingers. “Is that you?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Jisung says, swallowing around where his heart has become lodged in his throat. He tastes salt. He’s not sure if he should be here, and he tastes salt. “I—” he starts, but now he’s here he doesn’t know what to say. He’d rehearsed a hundred things but now that he’s in front of Chenle it’s like it all falls away — and curse him for still looking so utterly beautiful.</p><p>Chenle stands, licking the gelato from his fingers, glancing down at the remnants of the cone then throwing it in the water. Jisung blinks, though he doesn’t have time to process it. Chenle walks into his personal space, cups his cheeks in his hands, looking him in the eyes for a heartbeat of a second — as if he’s searching for something. It’s only a flash, a lighting strike over the sea. Only a moment before he kisses him.</p><p>He tastes sweet. Sweet and brilliant, like pure sunshine, like summer in essence. The past few weeks and everything more, a thousand possibilities wrapped up into one. All of Jisung’s doubts are thrown into the waves and he wraps his arms around Chenle, holding him against him, his mind turning blank as he melts into his touch.</p><p>He’s not sure how long they kiss for. Maybe ten seconds, maybe a little longer — but to Jisung it feels like a lifetime. “You didn’t say goodbye,” he says when they break apart.</p><p>“Why did you come here?” Chenle asks, at the same time, but Jisung is ready to answer.</p><p>“Why did you leave without me?”</p><p>“I—” Chenle says. His throat bobs and he looks away, bashful, thumbs smoothing over Jisung’s cheekbones. “I didn’t want to overstep.”</p><p>“Overstep what?”</p><p>“Everything. I thought maybe I’d misread it all. I thought — well. To me, you were the only thing that ever mattered. But I wasn’t sure if it was the same for you. I didn’t want to pressure you. I didn’t think you wanted me. Not like that.” He takes a deep breath and tilts his head back, blinking rapidly. “Fuck, I didn’t expect you to be here. Can we sit down?”</p><p>They sit under the palms, gulls strutting across the hot stone in front of them, boats bobbing in the marina, ocean filled with fistfuls of diamonds. Chenle tangles their fingers together and Jisung’s heart beats so hard he’s sure Chenle must hear him — it’s like a marching band in his chest, going on and on and on.</p><p>“God,” Chenle says. He runs his thumb over the back of Jisung’s hand. “Shit, Jisung. I’m so sorry.” He takes a breath, covering his face with his free hand for a second. “You’re really here, aren’t you?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Jisung says. “You didn’t make it easy.”</p><p>“How did you even find me?”</p><p>“I just guessed. I got off the train and some part of me told me you’d be here. So I ran.”</p><p>“That’s why you’re so sweaty, huh,” Chenle says, and he’s trying to play it off as funny, but it’s shaky — and it dissipates in a second as he looks back up at Jisung like he can’t believe he’s real. “Holy shit.”</p><p>“I couldn’t let you go,” Jisung says. He swallows, trying not to betray the nerves that are rocketing all through his senses, the wave he feels like he’s on the deck of a ship at sea. “You left all your paintings behind, Chenle.”</p><p>Chenle laughs, but it’s not a laugh that Jisung knows — no snort, no guffaw, no chortle, nothing so high pitched Jisung swears it would only be audible to dogs. It’s more like a vocalised ‘ha ha’. Nervous. Raw. “Yeah. I shouldn’t have blown you off last night. I — I realised you were worth a lot more than any of that. I don’t know if they hold any meaning for you but they are of you, so…”</p><p>“You don’t want them?”</p><p>“Not all art is meant to be shared,” Chenle says with a shrug. “I—I thought a lot last night. After we argued I went and sat in front of the window and just thought. I thought—” he stops again, taking another long breath. “It all sounds really stupid in retrospect.”</p><p>“It’s okay,” Jisung says, trying to play it off as casual but failing miserably. He’s about five seconds from bursting into tears, and looking at Chenle’s face isn’t doing him any favours. “I’m sure I sound even stupider.”</p><p>“Yeah?” Chenle laughs. “I doubt it. Try this. I thought you didn’t like me like that. That I — I wasn’t enough. I kept painting you because I didn’t know how else to show you how I felt. And I guess when it came to it maybe I should have realised…” he trails off. “I shouldn’t have been so bullheaded. You really came all this way for me?”</p><p>“Did I really come all this way for you?” Jisung repeats. He can’t believe Chenle is asking him that. Yes, he came all this way for him. Yes, he’s a foolish lovesick boy. Yes, he’d do it all again. “Chenle. When I found the house was empty I <em>ran</em>. I got on the train without thinking, and then when it stopped I ran all the way from the station to here. I was ready to turn the city upside down to find you.”</p><p>“I’m glad you found me here, then,” Chenle says, laughing. His eyes rake Jisung’s face and his expression softens, the corner of his mouth turning up. “I really like you, you know. That’s scary to say. But I do. Not just the version of you I paint, but the actual version of you. This one right here.” He reaches out and pinches Jisung’s cheek and Jisung bats his hand away, cheeks heating up.</p><p>“Shut up,” he mumbles. “I can’t believe you made me panic like that.”</p><p>“I don’t deserve you,” Chenle says. His hand comes up to cup Jisung’s cheek and Jisung meets his eyes, the whole world falling away around them. “I really don’t.”</p><p>“I still don’t really know what I’m gonna do with my life, but I thought about what you said,” Jisung blurts out, the idea sitting on the tip of his tongue for far too long. “About the house. I think I might try it. Turning it into a guesthouse, I mean. You could come stay with me? When I get everything up and running of course. There’s a whole room I could turn into a studio with a little balcony that overlooks the sea and…” he swallows, trying as hard as he can not to break Chenle’s eye contact.</p><p>Chenle squeezes his hand and nods, slow.</p><p>“Jisung,” Chenle starts, and Jisung prepares himself for the pain — for it all to crash down around him again. “Holy shit. Are you serious?”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>Chenle kisses him. Hand still on his cheek, lips soft and sweet. A gull cries above as they break apart and he’s smiling — wide, radiant, all of heaven, all the light in the cosmos incomparable to this boy who sits before him.</p><p>(Here is hope. Here is the waterfront I almost said goodbye forever on. Here is the ocean, infinite.)</p><p>“I can’t now,” Chenle says, and Jisung’s stomach twists, but Chenle keeps talking. “I can’t know <em>but</em>. But. Let me finish up my exhibition. <em>Come</em> to my exhibition.” He takes both of Jisung’s hands in his and looks at him with hopeful eyes. “I want you to be there. If you want to — of course.”</p><p>“I want to,” Jisung says. “If you want me to. If you think I won’t embarrass you then—”</p><p>“You’d never embarrass me,” Chenle says, cutting him off. “Never, ever. I would be blessed to have you there. I’m blessed to have you now. I still — I still think life is chaotic, but I also think you were put in my life for a reason Jisung. At least if these past few weeks have taught me anything, sometimes you can find the most incredible things where you least expect them. I came here,” he gestures around them, hands still joined with Jisung’s, the two of them moving as one, “to escape. To find myself. Instead I found you.”</p><p>“Chenle…” Jisung says, trailing off, stardust overflowing from his mouth. The sunlight is brilliant and warm and the waves lap at the pier and everything feels perfect, in one way or another, Chenle’s hands warm in his.</p><p>“Let me finish up my exhibition, and the answer is yes. I’d love to come stay, if you’d have me.”</p><p>“I would,” Jisung says. “I really, really would. More than anything in the world.”</p><p>“Then I’m yours.”</p><p>“You’re mine?”</p><p>“For as long as you’ll have me, I’m yours.”</p><p>Jisung doesn’t answer. He’s coated in sweat and his legs ache from sprinting through the city and he doesn’t know if he can put it into words, anyway. He just hopes the kiss he gives Chenle — surging up into him — he hopes it’s enough.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The train pulls in as they arrive at the platform — a rush of multicoloured shorts and shirts disembarking, hats and sunglasses and towels in exercise bags, no doubt headed out to Cinque Terre. In Jisung’s pocket is his address in Rome and his phone number — written on the back of half a receipt. The other half is in Chenle’s pocket.</p><p>“Well,” Chenle says, turning to him. The asphalt of the platform is hot and hazy and the tracks warp in the heat, everything blurring like a dream. Jisung almost pinches himself. He still can’t believe it’s real.</p><p>“Well,” Jisung echoes. Chenle smiles, shaking his head.</p><p>“Shut up.”</p><p>He cups his cheeks and pulls him close and it feels like the air is knocked out of his lungs — like the sea rises up to swirl around him. The two of them, the infinite blue. Not a goodbye kiss, but a hello — a promise. A reminder that this does not end here. This is it. This is where it begins. Heat surges up through Jisung’s chest, all the cosmos held in his hands. When they part he chases Chenle up for another kiss, and another, and another, pressing pecks on his lips, not wanting to let go.</p><p>“Well,” Jisung repeats, again, when he’s finally let him go, his face so close to Chenle’s his vision is a little blurry. At least he thinks it’s the distance. He’ll put it down to that.</p><p>“Yeah, yeah,” Chenle says. He presses his thumbs into Jisung’s cheekbones one last time and drops his hands from his face, pulling him into a hug. Jisung clutches at him and hooks his chin over his shoulder, and there they stay, until the big iron clock hanging over the platform is only a few minutes away from departure time, until Jisung reminds him he needs to go if he wants to get to Rome before dark.</p><p>Chenle nods, smoothing Jisung’s hair down one last time. “I’ll see you later Jisung.”</p><p>“Later,” Jisung echoes. “Soon, right? You need those paintings.”</p><p>“I want them back eventually, but I’ll be fine without them now. I can do enough with my sketches.” He tucks a strand of hair behind Jisung’s ear, picking up his suitcase and starting to walk to the doors. “But yes, soon. Consider it a promise.”</p><p>They stare at each other for a second, before Chenle breaks out into a grin and pulls him into a one armed hug.</p><p>“Goodbye,” Jisung says. “I’ll keep them safe for you.”</p><p>He climbs onto the train, and Jisung gets to watch through the dirty window as Chenle grunts and lifts his bag above his head to shove it into the overhead storage. He sits down in his seat and pulls down the window, grinning at Jisung as he does so.</p><p>“Do we kiss like movie characters now?” Chenle asks.</p><p>“Shut up,” Jisung says, even as he’s cupping his jaw and pressing a kiss to his lips. The doors on the train close and he takes a step back, not wanting to be sucked off the platform like his mother has always told him would happen if he stood too close.</p><p>“Guess that was a yes?” Chenle says, grinning like a madman.</p><p>“I’ll tell you not to come back,” Jisung threatens.</p><p>“It’s too late! You already made the offer!”</p><p>The train jerks and slowly moves, and Jisung walks with it.</p><p>“Maybe I’ll take it back!”</p><p>“It’s too late. I can’t hear you! Goodbye Jisung!”</p><p>“Goodbye!” Jisung says, jogging, forced to stop by the platform running out.</p><p>Chenle sticks his head out the window and waves at him with both hands, screaming out his name at the top of his lungs, his voice fading away as the train rounds the corner and takes him away.</p><p>Away but not gone. He’ll be back. Jisung has parts of him, he has a whole future to write. And better than anything — he has a promise.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thank yous in no particular order: vivi for making me join big bang and for helping with certain scenes, bon for cheerleading, nee for the original idea (and cheerleading), everyone on the tl who laughed at me when i posted word count updates, and of course my wonderful beta: chloe, who yelled at me every morning when they hadn't kissed yet. you are a trooper and once again you have been infinitely helpful in making this fic what it is. where would i be without you?</p><p>finally, a thank you to mozu for putting up with my bs &lt;3 you're an amazing artist (and an amazing person!!) and i feel so lucky to work with you *__*</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>